Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play King Ubu (Ubu roi) (1896), an absurdist work featuring the character Pa Ubu, who reappears in later plays, Cuckold Ubu and Slave Ubu. He coined the term and philosophical concept of pataphysics, which uses absurd irony to portray symbolic truths (and playfully vice versa).

Zahra Jassi is an actor, writer and theatremaker based in London. Her plays include Honour-Bound (VAULT Festival, London, 2023).

Michaela Jeffery is an award-winning Canadian playwright whose plays include WROL (Without Rule of Law), Wolf on the Ringstrasse, The Listening Room, Godhead, and Always.

Stephen Jeffreys (1950-2018) was a British playwright and a key figure at the Royal Court Theatre, London, where he was Literary Associate for eleven years, then a member of its Council. His celebrated playwriting workshops have influenced many writers, and are distilled in his book, Playwriting: Structure, Character, How and What to Write, published posthumously in 2019.

Jeffreys' plays include The Libertine and I Just Stopped By to See the Man (Royal Court); Valued Friends and A Going Concern (Hampstead); Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad (part of the Tricycle Theatre’s Great Game season about Afghanistan); The Convicts’ Opera (Out of Joint); Lost Land (starring John Malkovich, Steppenwolf, Chicago); The Art of War (Sydney Theatre Company) and A Jovial Crew (RSC). His adaptation of Dickens’ Hard Times has been performed all over the world.

He wrote the films The Libertine (starring Johnny Depp) and Diana (starring Naomi Watts). He co-authored the Beatles musical Backbeat which opened at the Citizens Theatre and went on to seasons in London’s West End, Toronto and Los Angeles. He translated The Magic Flute for English National Opera in Simon McBurney’s production.

His plays are published by Nick Hern Books.

Linda Walsh Jenkins was formerly a theatre professor at Northwestern University and a dramaturg in Chicago theatre.

Louis Jenkins was born and raised in Oklahoma, and moved with his wife Ann to Duluth, Minnesota, in 1971. His poems have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies, and he has seventeen collections of his poetry.

He has been awarded two Bush Foundation Fellowships for poetry, a Loft-McKnight Fellowship, and was the 2000 George Morrison Award winner. He has read his poetry on A Prairie Home Companion and was a featured poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in 1996 and at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in the UK in 2007.

Rosemary Jenkinson is a playwright from Belfast, whose works have been performed in Dublin, Edinburgh, New York and Washington D.C. She is also a short story writer.