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.

Imogen Hermes Gowar studied Archaeology, Anthropology and Art History before going on to work in museums. She began to write fiction inspired by the artefacts she worked with, and in 2013 won the Malcolm Bradbury Memorial Scholarship to study for an MA in Creative Writing at UEA.

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock was a finalist in the MsLexia First Novel Competition and shortlisted for the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers’ Award.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an award-winning poet, playwright, and bestselling novelist. Her debut novel for children The Girl of Ink & Stars won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, and the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year.

Her work has been short- and long-listed for other major prizes including the Costa Award, and the CILIP Carnegie Award. The Deathless Girls is her first novel for Young Adults. She's a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and lives by the river in Oxford with her husband and cat.

Andrew Michael Hurley is based in Lancashire. His first novel, The Loney, was originally published by Tartarus Press as a 300-copy limited edition, before being republished by John Murray. It went on to sell in twenty languages, win the Costa Best First Novel Award and the Book of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards. Devil's Day, his second novel, was picked as a Book of the Year in five newspapers, and won the Encore Award.

Jess Kidd completed her first degree in Literature with The Open University, and has since taught creative writing and gained a PhD in Creative Writing Studies. She has also worked as a support worker specialising in acquired brain injury.

In 2016, Jess won the Costa Short Story Award for Dirty Little Fishes and her debut novel Himself was selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. In 2017, Himself was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and longlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger.

Jess was brought up in London as part of a large family from Mayo, and plans to settle somewhere along the west coast of Ireland in the next few years. Until then, she lives in London with her daughter.

Elizabeth Macneal was born in Scotland and now lives in East London. She is a writer and potter and works from a small studio at the bottom of her garden.

She read English Literature at Oxford University, before working in the City for several years. In 2017, she completed the Creative Writing MA at UEA where she was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury scholarship.

The Doll Factory, Elizabeth's debut novel, won the Caledonia Novel Award 2018.

Natasha Pulley studied English Literature at Oxford University.

After stints working at Waterstones as a bookseller, then at Cambridge University Press as a publishing assistant in the astronomy and maths departments, she did the Creative Writing MA at UEA.

She later studied in Tokyo, where she lived on a scholarship from the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, and she is now a visiting lecturer at City University.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is her first novel.

Laura Purcell is a former bookseller living in Colchester, Essex with her husband and pet guinea pigs. She is the author of six novels, among them Gothic novel The Silent Companions, which was a Radio 2 and Zoe Ball ITV Book Club pick and The Shape of Darkness, winner of the inaugural Fingerprint Award for Historical Crime Book of the Year.

Her short story The Chillingham Chair was included in The Haunting Season anthology, which was an instant Sunday Times bestseller. She also wrote Roanoake Falls, a dramatic podcast for Realm, working with John Carpenter and Sandy King Carpenter.