Jacqueline Woodson is the is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and received the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the 2018 Children's Literature Legacy Award.

She is the 2014 National Book Award winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor.

She receive the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a three-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner.

Her books include The Other Side, Each Kindness, Coming On Home Soon, Feathers, Show Way, After Tupac and D Foster, and Miracle's Boys. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature.

Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in Sydney's western suburbs. She worked for the Sydney Morning Herald and in 1982 she won the Greg Shackleton scholarship to the journalism master's program at Columbia University. Later she worked for the Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans.

In 2006 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her novel March. Her novels Caleb's Crossing, People of the Book and The Secret Chord were New York Times bestsellers, and Year of Wonders is an international bestseller, translated into more than 25 languages. She is also the author of the acclaimed non-fiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.

In 2011 she presented Australia's prestigious Boyer Lectures, later published as The Idea of Home. In 2016 she was appointed Officer in the Order of Australia for her services to literature. Geraldine Brooks divides her time between Sydney and Massachusetts and has two sons.

Dave Eggers was born in Boston in 1970. He is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity, The Unforbidden is Compulsory, How We Are Hungry, Short Short Stories, Teachers Have It Easy, Surviving Justice, What is the What, How the Water Feels to the Fishes, The Wild Things, Zeitoun, A Hologram for the King, The Circle and Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

A Hologram for the King and The Circle are both currently in production for major film adaptations. Dave Eggers is the founder of McSweeney's independent publishing house, the 826 National network, and the nonprofit organisation ScholarMatch. He lives in Northern California with his family and Heroes of the Frontier is his seventh novel.

Colum McCann is the author of seven novels, three collections of stories and two works of non-fiction. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has been the recipient of many international honours, including the U.S National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination.

In 2017 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts. His work has been published in over 40 languages. He is the President and co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organisation, Narrative 4. He is the Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence in Hunter College, in New York, where he lives with his wife Allison and their family. His most recent novel, Apeirogon, became an immediate New York Times bestseller and won several major international awards. His first major non-fiction book, American Mother, will be published in February 2024.

Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 'for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat.' He has also won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor.

His many works include The Discreet Hero, The Feast of the Goat, The Bad Girl, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, all published by Faber. Edith Grossman has translated the works of the Nobel laureates Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others.

Her version of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote is considered the finest translation of the Spanish masterpiece in the English language.

Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of nine novels including The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary and Nora Webster.

His work has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times, has won the Costa Novel Award and the Impac Award.

His most recent novel is House of Names. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction, including New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families. He lives in Dublin.

Michael Chabon is the author of two collections of short stories, ‘A Model World’ and ‘Werewolves in their Youth’, the novels ‘The Mysteries of Pittsburgh’, ‘Wonder Boys’, ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’, ‘The Yiddish Policemen’s Union’ and ‘Telegraph Avenue’, and the non-fiction books ‘Maps and Legends and Manhood for Amateurs’.

Wonder Boys’ has been made into a film starring Michael Douglas and Robert Downey Jr. and ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, GQ, Esquire and Playboy. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and their four children.