The Border Readers is an association of regionally based professional actors with a wealth of performing experience in all media. Since 2018 we have been presenting themed audio narratives in libraries, art centres, galleries, hostelries, village halls, theatres, pubs and historic houses across the English border counties and occasionally into Scotland.
2026 AUTUMN TOUR
We’re excited to be back on the road this autumn with Words of Love; superb short stories from great writers about people in and out of love. Touring from Friday 25th September to Thursday 3rd December across the Borderlands.
The Row by Penelope Lively is a whip smart piece of comic writing on the ups and downs of married life from the much loved Booker prize winning author. Helen Hutchinson’s Taking Flight is the poignant story of would be lovers in Victorian Perthshire and the role played by a rural library in shaping their destinies. In Plastic Heart by Jeremy Page, Jamie dumps Helen so Helen dumps the clothes he bought her…or tries to. A painfully funny take on the unexpected perils of starting over. To Belong To by Kerry Andrew is a heart-warming tale of loss and redemption through the healing powers of nature and community on a remote Scottish island…..Watch this space or follow us on Facebook for more details of stories and writers, venues and readers.
Extra date: Otterburn Castle, Thurs 29th Oct. 8pm. (Awaiting final confirmation subject to Stables Bar refurbishment).
READERS
Janine Birkett began her professional acting career at Northumberland Theatre Company. Her second job was in the original production of Animal Farm with Northern Stage, and she went on to be a founding member of The Northern Stage Ensemble. Tv credits include Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Byker Grove, Vera with films including Jenny, Billy’s mam in Billy Elliot and numerous theatre and radio productions. An accomplished audio artist Janine has recorded over a hundred audio books, including the voice of Vera Stanhope for the audio version of Ann Cleeves’s original novels.
Roberta Kerr Most recent theatre includes The Love song of Alfred J Hitchcock for New Perspectives UK tour and Brits Off Broadway New York and the National Theatre’s production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time as well as many rep theatre productions across the UK. TV includes Downton Abbey, Hollyoaks, Doctors, EastEnders, Casualty, Emmerdale, Medics & Brookside. Roberta also played Wendy Crozier in Coronation Street. Radio includes Cottonopolis and The Archers.
Grace Kirby is an actor, director and teacher who started her career after graduating with a drama degree from Newcastle Polytechnic with Tyneside community theatre company Dodgy Clutch. She performed with Hexham based Theatre sans Frontiers on their first English language play Diamonds in your Pockets by Linda France, an adaptation of Quentin Blake’s The Green Ship for Librarian Theatre which toured libraries across the country. A self-devised solo show on rural isolation, Martha’s Orange, inspired by her part-time work as an NHS delivery driver, premiered at Theatre by the Lake Keswick before touring nationally to community arts venues.
Helen Longworth is an actor/musician and composer who trained at RADA. Theatre work includes, Unruly Women, The Last Waltz and The Wife of Usher’s Well (Quondam Theatre). Also Sirens at the Women of The World Festival, Hull (Blazon Theatre Co). Helen has also appeared in Aladdin, Peter Pan, Cinderella: A Fairy Tale; Sleeping Beauty and Grimm Tales for The Dukes, Lancaster. In 2020, Helen composed the music for and appeared in Ladies That Bus, based on real life stories from users of the 555 bus which toured to great success. A second play, Ladies That Dig, toured in early 2023. Helen plays the character of Hannah Riley in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers.
Wynne Potts Born and bred in Northumberland Wynne read English at Cambridge, before studying musical theatre at the Royal Central and acting at Rose Bruford. TV includes roles in Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories (BBC) and Julian Fellowes Belgravia (ITV). Theatre ranges from actor/musician roles in This Show Is Rubbish (Alphabetti, Newcastle) to Helene & Nanny in Elysium Theatre’s tour of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Wynne plays Mrs Smithson in a feature film Seeking Persephone filmed at Raby Castle and due for release in the US this year. Other work includes role-play for Northumbria Police, storytelling for Weardale Heritage Railway and interactive site specific roles for Live History Company.
Stephen Tomlin graduated in 1972 as a specialist teacher from the Central School. Between then and 2017 he worked in a huge variety and number of TV, theatre and radio productions as well as being a director, producer, writer/researcher and role player. BBC Radio drama include serials The Archers, Writing the Century and Home Front alongside many single dramas. Also numerous commercial & educational voice overs. TV ranges from classics like The Beiderbecke Affair, Harry’s Game and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates to adaptations of Jane Eyre and Mansfield Park as well as roles in Coronation Street, Brookside, Casualty, Hollyoaks and Emmerdale. Retiring to live in the north Tyne valley, Stephen founded The Border Readers in 2018.
WRITERS
Kerry Andrew is a composer and writer. Her debut novel, Swansong, was published by Jonathan Cape in January 2018 and is currently working on her second novel. She performed her debut short story One Swallow on BBC Radio 4 in 2014. Kerry is the winner of four British Composer Awards and specialises in experimental vocal and choral music, music-theatre and community music. She performs alternative folk music under the banner of You Are Wolf and sings with award-winning a cappella trio Juice Vocal Ensemble. Kerry made her short story debut on BBC Radio 4 in 2014 and our story To Belong To was shortlisted for the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award. Originally from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, Kerry lives in London.
Helen Hutchinson studied English Literature at the University of Exeter and then qualified as a broadcast journalist from University College Cardiff. She spent most of her professional career in radio and television newsrooms, with a ten year spell lecturing in journalism and media at the University of Cumbria. Until 2019 she was a freelance producer of the ITV regional news programme. She takes a keen interest in reading and writing, and regularly chairs talks at literary festivals. Her own creative writing has been a private passion all her life, but a course at the Garsdale Retreat in the Yorkshire Dales in 2022 proved the inspiration to start taking it more seriously. In 2023 our short storyTaking Flight was Helen’s winning entry for the ‘Books and Borrowing’ literary competition run by Stirling University.
Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London.
Our narrative, The Row, is taken from Penny’s fifth collection, The Purple Swamp Hen & Other Stories (Penguin, 2017)
Jeremy Page. Jeremy’s first novel Salt (Penguin, 2007) was set among the saltmarshes of North Norfolk, where he grew up and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Jelf Award. His second novel The Wake (2009) won the prize for fiction at the East Anglian book awards and was shortlisted for the New Angle Prize. His third novel, The Collector of Lost Things (2013) was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Walter Scott Prize. Pale Winter Light, a collection of supernatural fiction, was published last year. Jeremy’s short story Do It Now, Jump the Table was a finalist for the BBC National Short Story Award. Our story Plastic Heart is as yet unpublished. Jeremy has worked in the UK film and TV industry for twenty five years, as a script editor and consultant for the BBC, Channel 4 and Film Four. In addition he has taught creative writing at the University of East Anglia, at City University, Goldsmiths, as well as for the Arvon foundation. He also teaches screenwriting at the London Film School. Jeremy Page lives in London with his wife and three sons.
ARCHIVE OF PREVIOUS PRODUCTIONS
Haunted, classic and contemporary ghost story readings, toured on and around Halloween in 2018 and again in 2019. During the Covid crisis of 2020/2021 more classic ghost stories were recorded for listening on You Tube. The Border Readers returned to live touring in Spring 2022 with a different theme; Many Deadly Returns which celebrated 21 years of Murder Squad, the north of England’s leading association of crime writers. That theme continued in 2023 with Murder They Write, gripping crime stories by Murder Squad co-founders Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards and Cath Staincliffe. In autumn 2024 and spring of 2025 the readers were back on the road with Land Lines, short stories with a contemporary countryside setting from Helen Dunmore, Deborah Moggach, Tim Pears, Adam Thorpe and Jo Scott.
Shore Lines toured in 2025 and again in the spring of 2026. It proved a successful entertaining line up of stories from our brilliant regionally based writer friends Ann Cleeves, Linda Cracknell, Tony Glover and Jo Scott.
Programmes 2018 – 2022 toured contemporary and classic short stories by: Chez Brenchley, Elizabeth Bowen, Amelia B Edwards, Elizabeth Gaskell, Muriel Gray, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Edith Nesbit, Christine Poulson, Muriel Spark and Oscar Wilde.
Short stories by Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Margaret Murphy and Cath Staincliffe toured in 2022
Some audience comments from library venues: ‘I was surprised just how lovely it was, as an adult, to be read to.” ” Wonderful – A great choice of stories and such a pleasure to be read to.’…Excellent – readers were clear (I’m hard of hearing). ‘Thoroughly enjoyed the evening. thank you!’…’Great – loved the ‘stage’ set too!…Very enjoyable – a different experience.’ ….’Exceptional actors. Great stories with a strong connection to the area.’ ‘Enthralled by the storylines and a sense of being in the action.’ …’A wonderful evening in a lovely venue.’…’Atmospheric set. Great stories, well read.’ ‘I love listening to a story. I like the intimate setting, the sense of place in the stories and the voices of the storytellers’.
We are always open to play new venues and also welcome private bookings to suit particular requirements. Use the Contact page and Stephen will get back to you ASAP
STEPHEN TOMLIN 