Bridget Collins trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art after reading English at King's College, Cambridge. She is the author of seven acclaimed books for young adults and has had two plays produced, one at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Michel Faber has written nine other books. In addition to the Whitbread-shortlisted Under the Skin, he is the author of the highly acclaimed The Crimson Petal and the White, and most recently The Book of Strange New Things, which was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and won the Saltire Book of the Year Award 2015. Born in Holland, brought up in Australia, he now lives in the UK. This is his first poetry collection.

Emilia Hart is a British-Australian writer. She was born in Sydney and studied English Literature and Law at the University of New South Wales before working as a lawyer in Sydney and London. Emilia is a graduate of Curtis Brown Creative's Three Month Online Novel Writing Course and was Highly Commended in the 2021 Caledonia Novel Award. Her short fiction has been published in Australia and the UK. She lives in London.

Ainslie Hogarth has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Auckland and has published two YA horror novels, in the U.S. with Flux Books and France in with Editions Milan.

The Lonely is about a girl who is crushed by a rock and bleeds to death all day long, and The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) is about a girl who may or may not have murdered all of her friends with a pick-axe. Her short fiction has been published in Hazlitt, Black Static, and elsewhere. She is the author of Motherthing, a New York Times Best Book of the Year, was published in 2022.

Robert Lautner was born in Middlesex in 1970. Before becoming a writer he owned his own comic-book store, worked as a wine merchant, photographic consultant and recruitment consultant.

He now lives on the Pembrokeshire coast in a wooden cabin with his wife and children.

James Smythe was born in London in 1980. He has worked as a computer game writer and currently teaches creative writing.

He also writes a blog for the Guardian. The Machine is his fourth novel and is shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2014.

Previous novels include The Testimony and a science fiction series including The Explorer and The Echo.

The Testimony was awarded Wales Fiction Book of the Year, 2013. He lives in London.

Lavie Tidhar (The Bookman; A Man Lies Dreaming; The Violent Century) is the author of the breakout Campbell and Neukom award-winning novel Central Station, which has been translated into ten languages.

He has also received the British Science Fiction, Neukom Literary, and World Fantasy awards. Tidhar was born in Israel, grew up on a kibbutz, has lived in south Africa, Laos, and Vanuatu, and currently resides in London.

Francine Toon grew up in Sutherland and Fife, Scotland. Her poetry, written as Francine Elena, has appeared in The Sunday Times, The Best British Poetry 2013 and 2015 anthologies (Salt) and Poetry London, among other places. Pine was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She lives in London and works in publishing.

Evie Wyld grew up in Australia and the UK. She now runs Review, a small independent bookshop in London. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award. In 2011 she was listed as one of the Culture Show's Best New British Novelists.

She was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2013 she was listed as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Evie's second novel, All The Birds, Singing, was published in 2013.

It was longlisted for the 2014 Stella Prize and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the Costa Novel Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She is the winner of the 2013 Encore Award, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and the 2014 Miles Franklin Award. Her graphic novel with illustrator Joe Sumner, Everything is Teeth, was published in 2015.

Louisa Young was born in London and read history at Trinity College, Cambridge. She lives in London with her daughter, with whom she co-wrote the best-selling Lionboy trilogy, and is the author of twelve previous books including the bestselling novel My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and was a Richard and Judy Book Club choice, and its acclaimed sequel, The Heroes' Welcome.