Emma Donoghue is an Irish writer living in Canada. Her 2010 novel, Room, was an internationally award-winning bestseller and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes. Emma's screenplay for Room's multi-award-winning film adaptation has earned her an Oscar nomination.

The Lottery's More or Less is the second book in her children's series The Lotterys. Caroline Hadilaksono was born in Indonesia and moved to Los Angeles when she was twelve. She now lives and works in New York, where she is a freelance designer and illustrator, working on everything from children's books to murals.

Kirsty Logan is the author of the novel The Gracekeepers, the short story collections A Portable Shelter and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales, the flash fiction chapbook The Psychology of Animals Swallowed Alive, and the short memoir The Old Asylum in the Woods at the Edge of the Town Where I Grew Up. Her books have won the Lambda Literary Award, the Polari First Book Prize, the Saboteur Award, the Scott Prize and the Gavin Wallace Fellowship, and been selected for the Radio 2 Book Club and the Waterstones Book Club. Her short fiction and poetry has been translated into Japanese and Spanish, recorded for radio and podcasts, exhibited in galleries and distributed from a vintage Wurlitzer cigarette machine. She lives in Glasgow with her wife.

Caroline O'Donoghue is a Contributing Editor for The-Pool.com who has written for Glamour, The Irish Times and Buzzfeed. She also co-hosts the podcast, School for Dumb Women.

Linda Grant is a novelist and journalist. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000 and the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage in 2006, and was longlisted for the Man Booker in 2002 for Still Here.

The Clothes on Their Backs was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2008 and went on to win the South Bank Show Award.

Susie Boyt is the author of five other acclaimed novels and the much-loved memoir My Judy Garland Life which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize, staged at the Nottingham Playhouse and serialised on BBC Radio 4. She has written about art, life and fashion for the Financial Times for the past fourteen years and has recently edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories by Henry James. She is also a director at the Hampstead Theatre. She lives in London with her family.

Stella Duffy has written thirteen novels, over fifty short stories, and ten plays. She has twice won Stonewall Writer of the Year and twice won the CWA Short Story Dagger.

HBO have optioned her two Theodora novels for television. In addition to her writing work, Stella is a theatre-maker and the co-director of the national Fun Palaces campaign for greater access to culture for all.

She was awarded an OBE in 2016 for her services to the Arts. 

Kamila Shamsie is the author of six novels: In the City by the Sea; Kartography (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Salt and Saffron; Broken Verses; Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) and, most recently, A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2013 was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, White is for Witching (which won the Somerset Maugham Award), Mr Fox and the short story collection What is Not Yours is Not Yours.

In 2013, Helen was included in Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

Claire Kohda is a writer and musician. She reviews books for publications including the Guardian and the TLS, specialising in books from and about East Asia. As a violinist, she has played with musicians and ensembles including Jessie Ware, RY X, Pete Tong, the London Contemporary Orchestra and The English Chamber Orchestra, and on various film soundtracks.

Eleanor Crewes is a London-based illustrator and writer. She graduated from Illustration at University of The Arts London in 2016. The Times I Knew I Was Gay was first created as a hand-stitched zine which Crewes biked across London to various comic shops.

As demand grew her zine developed into a larger book that she published in 2018 with Good Comics. After selling out the first edition, Crewes expanded it into a fully-fledged memoir with Virago and Scribner for publication in 2020. Crewes currently lives in North London and is working on a children's graphic novel.