Nick Toczek, a First Story author for more than a decade, is a writer and performer born and based in Bradford, Yorkshire. He’s also worked as a poet, journalist, magician, vocalist, lyricist, events organiser, and radio broadcaster.

During the early 1970s, based in Birmingham where he’d gained an honours degree in Industrial Metallurgy, he founded the poetry magazine The Little Word Machine, co-founded Moseley Community Arts Festival, and toured with his music and poetry troupe, The Stereo Graffiti Show.

Moving back to Bradford in 1977, he co-founded the seminal music fanzine The Wool City Rocker and formed the band Ulterior Motives, in which he was lyricist and lead vocalist. In the early 1980s, he ran weekly punk, skinhead, psychobilly, and indie rock gigs in various West Yorkshire venues. Nick and Wild Willi Beckett co-ran the north’s first weekly alternative cabaret club.

Nick’s many collections of children’s poetry including The Dragon Who Ate Our School have seen him become a best-selling children’s writer. He’s worked in UK schools and in overseas schools in dozens of countries around the world.

His seminal book on anti-Semitism and racism, Haters, Baiters and Would-Be Dictators, was published by Routledge in 2016. In December 2023, the University of Bradford bestowed on him an Outstanding Achievement Award for his services to literature and culture.

Nick continues to write every day. Having now published more than fifty books and released two dozen albums of music and spoken word, he has no plans to retire.