Pearse & Black was founded by  Josie Pearse and Penny Black in 2015. 

Josie Pearse runs writing  groups and manages the day to day business of Pearse & Black, a literary agency.  

She gained her PhD from Cardiff University with her thesis, Writing and Not Writing on the Cusp of Life and Fiction.  She specialises in helping writers make fiction from life experience.

Josie has taught creative writing for most of her life. She has been a writer in residence and worked with writers at all levels of skill. She runs a closed group which supports writers working on long projects. Her pedagogical approach is based on the principle that writing is learned by doing and refining. Knowledge of a writer's own process is as important a tool as any other: Josie aims to help each writer master that  process.

She has published two novels under a pseudonym and  has put together several collections of new writers' voices and has recently started publishing their short stories online as the editor at Fifteenth Letter Press

Penny Black has taken a back seat recently, after helping to found Pearse & Black. She is working as Royal Literary Fellow.