Writers from the edge of Yorkshire, chasing the edges of things.
Welcome to Wordbotherers. We’re a small collective of authors and poets rooted in the quiet corners of North Yorkshire, drawn together by a shared fascination with stories — not just for how they entertain, but for how they unsettle, illuminate, and sometimes heal.
Each of us writes from a slightly different threshold: folklore tangled with grief, wry poems about salt and salsa, philosophical tales that worry away at illusions. What binds us isn’t a genre, but a temperament — a suspicion that there’s more going on beneath the surface, and that words are still our best chance of catching it.
You’ll find us in village halls, coffee shops, or alone at kitchen tables, writing toward the questions that won’t leave us alone. Together we form a kind of accidental lighthouse, sending out irregular flashes — sometimes playful, sometimes raw, sometimes as clear and cutting as winter light on the moors.
Meet the Wordbotherers
Pat Barnett moves through quiet truths and fractured folklore. Raised in Manchester, wandering through Wales and rural Australia, she finally rooted in North Yorkshire, each place leaving fingerprints on her stories. She finds beauty in the broken and a peculiar magic in the margins.
Lillian Bradbury writes with Yorkshire stitched into every line. From canal-side murders to the soft grit of memory, she captures the rhythm of ordinary lives with humour, depth, and a playlist for every mood. If there’s a dance in language, she knows the steps.
Simon Robinson trained first in medicine, then wandered further afield — through Gnosticism, Buddhism, and the dark forests of the self. Now settled by the sea in Scarborough, he writes to prise open illusions. His essays and fictions are maps drawn from direct experience: restless, rigorous, always edging toward the unspoken.
P.J. calls himself a “Poet Worrier.” Part T.S. Eliot, part Spike Milligan, part gruff Yorkshire contrarian, he doesn’t write to please, but to poke holes in pomposity. If a poem doesn’t punch you in the chest or at least make you grin sideways, he’s not interested.
Together we keep a loose rhythm of publishing on Facebook and here on our blog, sharing work that is sometimes delicate, sometimes barbed, always ours. Have a wander, take what you like, and if anything here stirs or steadies you, we’re glad to have met.