Ashley Stokes is a writer, editor, creative writing lecturer and workshop leader.

His fiction slips back and forth between the contemporary and the historical, and the comic and the experimental. He writes dark and atmospheric stories, often about obsessives trapped in worlds of their own making. Touching the Starfish (Unthank Books, 2010), his first novel, has been compared to The History Man and Tristram Shandy. The follow-up, a short story sequence called The Syllabus of Errors: Twelve Stories of Obsession, Loss and Getting in a State (Unthank Books, 2013) was compared to Joseph Roth and Roberto Bolano. Characterized by a unique and driven voice, his fiction has appeared in Bare Fiction, The Lonely Crowd, London Magazine, The Warwick Review, Wales Arts Review, Fleeting, Lakeview, Staple and many other anthologies and journals. He is also the co-editor of the Unthology short fiction series.

As a creative writing tutor and editor with over fifteen years experience, Ashley understands what writers need to marshal, in terms of imagination, organization, process and style, if they are to complete a novel or collection. He is Mr Eclectic and is able to support and help hone the work of writers of all genres, from popular novelists to formal experimenters, as well as biographers and non-fiction writers. He has taught creative writing for the University of East Anglia, Norwich University College of the Arts, the Open University and the Open College of the Arts and has critiqued over 900 books for The Literary Consultancy. He is currently Head of the Unthank School of Writing, where he runs two lively workshops in Norwich, and is Head of Copy for Robot Mascot.

After completing a second collection of stories, This is How You Disappear, he is currently writing a new novel. He lives in Norwich and owns too many books.