Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, naturalist and historian of science. Her book H is for Hawk won many prizes, including the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Costa Book of the Year, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in France, and in the US was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, and lives in Suffolk.

Neel Mukherjee’s second novel, The Lives of Others (Chatto & Windus), was published in the UK in May 2014, in India (by Vintage) in June 2014, and in the USA, by W.W. Norton & Company, in October 2014. The Lives of Others was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014. It has also been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award.

His first novel, Past Continuous (Picador India, 2008), was joint winner of the Vodafone-Crossword Award, India’s premier literary award for writing in English, for best novel of 2008 (along with Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies).

The UK edition of the novel, titled A Life Apart, was published by Constable & Robinson in January 2010. It won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Fiction and was shortlisted for the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Fiction and the Southbank Sky Arts Award. It was also chosen as a ‘Book of the Year’ in The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, the TLS and The Sunday Telegraph. He has reviewed fiction for The Times and TIME Magazine Asia and has written for the TLS, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer, The New York Times, Boston Review, The Sunday Telegraph and Biblio.

He is also a contributing editor to Boston Review. He lives in London.

Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst in private practice, and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University of London.

He is the author of numerous books and articles on modern literature, psychoanalysis and cultural theory.

His books include How to Read Freud (Granta, 2005) and The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark (Granta 2013). He is a regular contributor to Guardian, New Statesman and TLS.

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.

Rachel Holmes is the author of Eleanor Marx: A Life, The Secret Life of Dr James Barry and The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman.

She is co-editor of Fifty Shades of Feminism and I Call Myself A Feminist. She lives in London.

Marina Warner's study of the Arabian Nights, Stranger Magic (2011) won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2013; in 2015 she was awarded the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities and was made DBE.

She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Fellow of the British Academy and President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Jackie Kay is a Scottish poet and novelist, and has been the National Poet of Scotland since 2016. She is the author of a number of works, including The Adoption Papers, Trumpet and Red Dust Road.

The recipient of numerous prizes, she was also twice shortlisted for the Scottish Book of the Year Award. She is currently chancellor of the University of Salford, and divides her time between Glasgow and Manchester

Alex Preston is a bestselling and award-winning novelist, most recently of the critically-acclaimed In Love and War. He appears regularly on BBC television and radio. He writes for GQ, Harper's Bazaar and Town & Country Magazine as well as monthly fiction reviews for the Observer. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Kent.

Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. She writes for the Guardian, New York Times and Frieze among many other publications. Her first book, To the River, was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book of the Year.

The Trip to Echo Spring was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Biography Award and the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize. The Lonely City was shortlisted for the 2016 Gordon Burn Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and has been translated into fifteen languages. She lives in Cambridge.