The Tea Set
The Tea Set brings together women from all over the UK, sometimes further afield. Usually from Earth.
We create thematic stories, poetry, and images in response to the world around us and far beyond. Our ideas are celebrated in anthologies and this collective website. Thanks for visiting us. Fancy a cup of tea and a slice of revolution?
This website is our showcase, collectively and individually. It’s a place where we can show you our work and you can find out more about each member of the group. Click below to find out who we are and how we use our creative superpowers for good. When you click on a name you’ll be taken to our individual pages where you can marvel at the array of creative talent we’ve brought together over a brew and a splash of genius.
Tasseomancy
The new anthology from Tea Set Creatives!
Our anthology was launched at the Herts Book Festival on 18th May 2024, and is now available to order from this page.
Or you can use this handy QR code
to place your order!
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Amina Alyal
Amina works mainly on myth, gothic and the fairy tale, as areas that reflect the deepest and most varied aspects of the human imagination.
As a poet and an academic, she is interested in the capacities and opacities of language, particularly in its rhetorical manifestations, and explores these in a range of both creative and analytical work.
Favourite Tea
Favourite Cake:
Lapsang Souchong
Lemon Drizzle
Annamaria Pellegrino
A specialist in positive psychology and wellbeing, Annamaria coaches creatives, entrepreneurs and women trying to discover who they are, who they want to be, and what they want in life, through her business, Bodhi Fit Ltd.
Favourite Tea
Favourite Cake:
Favourite Biscuit:
Sencha green tea
Cheesecake or Carrot cake
As a biscuit aficionado, I cannot commit to just one type of biscuit. However if I must, then it has to be Ringo.
Bev Morris
Inspired by the voices of extraordinary people in extreme situations, Bev writes through listening to stories told by survivors. From women survivors of abuse to soldiers at war, she is drawn to experiences that question the very nature of humans, our impact on the world and each other. She seeks out the fragments of trauma that lodge themselves deep inside ordinary people, changing them forever, sometimes for the better. Often for the worse.
Bev’s work itself is created in fragments; poems, flash fiction, haiku, micro-scripts. She creates space for unheard voices, even when those voices falter or scream.
Favourite Tea
Favourite Cake:
Darjeeling
I have never met a piece of cake I didn’t like.
Diana Defries
Artist, cartoonist, poet and writer with leanings towards darkness, humour, or the absurd.
She’s had various poems published, and illustrated two children’s books. She’s now re-embarking on being a creative bod, after life very rudely got in the way and is currently working on a number of graphic and written projects.
Favourite Tea
Favourite Cake:
Earl Grey or Mango
Homemade Apple & Cinnamon
Judi Sissons
Writer, poet, art maker, writing for wellbeing practitioner, survivor and thriver, Judi practices on the border between art and therapy.
She has published poems and stories in anthologies.
Judi is a member of the National Association for Writers in Education and Lapidus, the international words for wellbeing organisation.
Favourite Tea
Favourite Cake:
Yorkshire Tea
Fat Rascal
Louise Barden
Louise won her first writing prize at the age of six, for a review of a school trip to The Nutcracker. But things plateaued for a while after that.
Finally, after studying creative writing with the Open University, she won two prizes in international short story competitions, writing stories with a humorous twist, based on her life as a teacher in a boarding school. (Stories published by BWC Press 2015 and 2016 – Anthology of the Winners of the Bedford International Writing Competition.)
Hankering after adventure, Louise moved abroad to teach in 2016, and after several years of working, adventuring and travel blogging (www.channellingmrtoad.co.uk) she returned to England. She came across a murder mystery novel that her son had written at the age of eleven and reread it. She decided to take the story, and the wonderful characters he’d created, forward in another book. This resulted in Murder at the Herald, which was published on Amazon in November 2022. It has recently received a Chill with a Book Readers’ Award.
She is currently working on a sequel to Murder at the Herald, and is redrafting a historical novel, set in the 1920s.
Favourite Tea
Favourite Cake:
Favourite Biscuit:
Oolong tea
Coffee walnut
Tunnock’s Tea Cake
Sally Lawrence
Painter and drawer of pictures, scribbler of writings, teller of tales.
Survivor.
Favourite Tea
Favourite Cake:
Earl Grey
Bakewell Tart
Sarah Wragg
Sarah loves a good old fashioned ghost story and writing poems about them has become her thing. She writes lots of other things too – ‘ordinary’ poems, short stories, plays, and she loves writing stuff that makes people laugh… but it’s those shivers that always keep her coming back for more!
Having won a competition to have her first collection of poems published (Ghost Walk by Hedgehog Poetry Press) as well as a number of poems published in a number of anthologies, you’d think she’d be feeling like a grown up poet by now…
Favourite Tea
Favourite Cake:
Favourite Biscuit:
Earl Grey
Carrot cake
Anything that goes with cheese
Rodney – the Tea Set Cat
From an unassuming background, Rodney’s talents for mouse-based art (inspired by Damian Hirst) can often be seen adorning the kitchen floor or clinging to a curtain.He has a rare gift for being a living work of art as he follows sunbeams around the house, waiting for the light to strike him in the most photogenic manner. Rodney is perfection in motion as he contemplates the classics, the great philosophers, and the exact amount of adoration required to fulfil his daily tummy tickling needs.
His motto is ‘Be More Rodney’.
Favourite tea:
Favourite food:
Tepid Darpuddling or Earl Lay In the Sunshine
Rattenberg or Fondant Felines
Rebecca Bilkau
Poet and publisher.
Favourite Tea:
Favourite Cake:
Darjeeling
Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte