York, August 2020. Stairwell Books, the publisher of the Dream Catcher Literary Arts Journal, is pleased to announce the appointment of Hannah Stone with immediate effect as editor of Dream Catcher, working towards the publication of Issue 42 in December 2020. Hannah, who is both an accomplished poet and able administrator, will steer Dream Catcher into the third decade of the twenty-first century.

Hannah is well known to Stairwell, who published her as one of Eight Medievalist Poets in New Crops from Old Fields (ed. Oz Hardwick) in 2015, followed by her first full length collection, Lodestone, 2016. These followed hard on the heels of completing her MA in Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University where she studied under York-based poets Oz Hardwick and Amina Alyal. She has since published Missing Miles, which won the Geoffrey Stevens Memorial Prize for Indigo Dream Publishing in 2017, and Swn y Morloi, the inaugural pamphlet with Marsden-based poetry house Maytree Press in 2019. An entry to the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet 2014-5 competition won her the attention of Billy Collins, who awarded her the Yorkshire Poetry Prize. She has several collaborations with fellow poets in print with Indigo Dreams, under the Wordspace imprint she established as part of her MA. Her collaboration with Pamela Scobie, Fit to Bust, published in July 2020, will be the first full length poetry book from Runcible Spoon Press.
In addition to having over 300 poems published across various digital and paper journals throughout the UK and overseas, anthologies, and other publications, Hannah also works with musicians and has written an opera libretto, a Requiem and numerous occasional pieces in collaboration with fellow chorister and composers Matthew Oglesby and Fiona Pacey. Matt and Hannah’s Penthos Requiem was due to receive its second performance on Good Friday of lockdown.
Hannah has been involved in a number of poetry projects and events in the Yorkshire area, including a stint as co-editor of the acclaimed Algebra of Owls poetry ezine, contributions to the Leeds Trinity Writers’ Festival, and Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe. She currently comperes the monthly spoken word event Wordspace; curates Nowt but Verse at the Leeds Library; and convenes the Leeds Lieder poets and composers forum for the annual Leeds Lieder Festival. An academic theologian in another life, she has recently been appointed as poet-theologian in virtual residence at Leeds Church Institute; her weekly blogs on engaging with Covid-19 through the medium of poetry can be read on LCILEEDS.ORG.
Dream Catcher issue 41, edited by York poet Amina Alyal is available in August this year. This is by far the largest edition we have published and features the art of the late Jeffrey Spedding, whose sudden death in February this year was a great loss to the arts and music establishment.

Dream Catcher was founded in 1996 by writer Paul Sutherland with the aim of providing an eclectic mix of poetry and short stories intended to appeal to a wide range of both writers and readers. 2021 will be Dream Catcher’s 25th birthday and we hope to celebrate both the vanquishing of coronavirus and a quarter century of great writing. Publisher Alan Gillott states, “The magazine has deep roots in the region, and although our contributors come from all over the world, Dream Catcher has always been well supported here in the north of England.” Co-publisher Rose Drew adds, “Dream Catcher has earned the respect of the poetry world and remains one of the leading literary magazines in Britain.”