Adrian Tchaikovsky is the author of the acclaimed Shadows of the Apt fantasy series and the epic science fiction blockbuster Children of Time.

He has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a British Fantasy Society Award, and been nominated for the David Gemmell Legend Award.

In civilian life he is a lawyer, gamer and amateur entomologist.

Tade Thompson is the author of Rosewater, which was the winner of the 2019 Arthur C. Clarke Award, inaugural winner of the Nommo Award and a John W. Campbell finalist. He has written a trilogy set in the world of Rosewater and is working on a space opera. His Shirley Jackson Award-shortlisted novella The Murders of Molly Southbourne has recently been optioned for screen adaptation. Born in London to Yoruba parents, he lives and works on the south coast of England where he battles an addiction to books.

Peter F. Hamilton was born in Rutland in 1960 and now lives in Somerset. He began writing in 1987, and sold his first short story to Fear magazine in 1988. He has written many bestselling novels, including the Greg Mandel series, the Night's Dawn trilogy, the Commonwealth Saga, the Void trilogy, The Chronicle of the Fallers, short story collections and several standalone novels including Fallen Dragon and Great North Road.

Ian McDonald was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He is the author of Luna: New Moon and Luna: Wolf Moon. He has won the Locus Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He now lives in Belfast.

Adam regularly competes against best barbecue teams on the Barbeques Galore Championship circuit and has picked up a handful of trophies for various categories including a Reserve Grand Championship trophy in 2017.

With many years of girth-building food experiences or tours of places including the United States, Caribbean, Mexico, South Pacific, Arabian Desert (UAE), Spain, Greece, Italy and Turkey Adam has picked up some of the best flavor combinations and cooking techniques and lays them down in 'Ribs' for all to enjoy.

Having owned his own mobile food trailer called Yankee Deli, serving American Style Street Food as well as catering functions, food festivals and other events, Adam certainly knows his way around both the indoor and outdoor kitchens.

Tim Pears is the author of eight novels: In the Light of Morning, In the Place of Fallen Leaves (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), Wake Up, Blenheim Orchard, In a Land of Plenty (made into a ten-part BBC series), A Revolution of the Sun, Landed (shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and the 2011 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards 2011), and Disputed Land.

He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, and has taught creative writing at Ruskin College and elsewhere. He lives in Oxford with his wife and children.

Frances Hardinge spent her childhood in a huge old house that inspired her to write strange stories from an early age. She read English at Oxford University, then got a job at a software company. However, by this time a persistent friend had finally managed to bully Frances into sending a few chapters of Fly By Night, her first children's novel, to a publisher. Macmillan made her an immediate offer. The book went on to publish to huge critical acclaim and win the Branford Boase First Novel Award. Known for her beautiful use of language, she has since written many critically acclaimed novels, including A Skinful of Shadows, Verdigris Deep, Cuckoo Song, and the Costa Award-winning The Lie Tree.

Stephen Baxter is the pre-eminent SF writer of his generation. With Terry Pratchett he has co-authored the Long Earth novels. Published around the world he has also won major awards in the UK, US, Germany, and Japan. Born in 1957 he has degrees from Cambridge and Southampton. He lives in Northumberland with his wife.

Christopher Priest is a critically acclaimed novelist and comic book writer. Priest created Static Shock for Milestone Media, Inc.

The property became the first nationally syndicated African American animated TV show, and Static continues to appear in DC Comics. Priest is also the writer of one of the most renowned runs on Marvel's Black Panther.

He currently writes DEATHSTROKE for DC Comics.

Lauren Beukes is the award-winning and internationally best-selling South African author of The Shining Girls, Zoo City and Broken Monsters, among other works. Her novels have been published in 24 countries and are being adapted for film and TV. She's also a screenwriter, comics writer journalist and award-winning documentary maker. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa with her daughter and two troublesome cats.

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.

Jane Rogers has written six novels including Mr Wroe's Virgins (dramatised as an award-winning television serial) and Promised Lands, which won the Writers' Guild Best Novel Award 1996. She also writes for TV and radio, and teaches at Sheffield Hallam University.

The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as "Britain's most respected living horror writer". He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature.

Pirya Sharma's fiction has appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark and Tor.com. She's been anthologised in several of Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year series, Paula Guran's Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series, Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, Steve Haynes' Best British Fantasy 2014, and Johnny Main's Best British Horror 2015. She's also been on many Locus' Recommended Reading Lists. "Fabulous Beasts" was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She is a Grand Judge for the Aeon Award, an annual writing competition run by Albedo One, Ireland's longest-running and foremost magazine of the Fantastic. A collection of some of Priya's work, All the Fabulous Beasts, was released in 2018 from Undertow Publications.

Eric Brown is the BSFA award-winning author of more than 20 novels and as many novellas. Hehas had many short stories published in Interzone magazine and was, for many years, the SF and Fantasy reviewer for The Guardian

Simon Clark is a Pulitzer-nominated journalist at The Wall Street Journal in London. A British citizen, he has been a journalist since 2000, reporting on a wide range of financial, economic and political subjects such as the poppy fields of Afghanistan, the copper mines of Congo and the banks in the City of London.

Robert Shearman is an award-winning writer for television, radio and the stage, as well as several acclaimed short story collections, the first of which won him a World Fantasy Award, and Doctor Who audio scripts for Big Finish Productions.

Mark Lawrence was born in Champagne-Urbanan, Illinois, to British parents but moved to the UK at the age of one. He went back to the US after taking a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College to work on a variety of research projects including the ‘Star Wars’ missile defence programme.

Returning to the UK, he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. He says he never had any ambition to be a writer so was very surprised when a half-hearted attempt to find an agent turned into a global publishing deal overnight.

His first trilogy, The Broken Empire, has been universally acclaimed as a ground-breaking work of fantasy, and both Emperor of Thorns and The Liar’s Key have won the Gemmell Legend award for best fantasy novel. Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol.

Tim Lebbon is the New York Times bestselling author of the movie novelizations of 30 Days of Night and The Cabin in the Woods. He has also written many critically acclaimed horror and dark fantasy novels.

Tim has won three British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Shocker, a Tombstone and been a finalist for the International Horror Guild and World Fantasy Awards.

Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (winner of the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and the Esquire Award for Non-Fiction) and Things My Mother Never Told Me ('the must read book of the year' - Tony Parsons),. He also wrote a study of the disturbing child murder, the Bulger case, As If. His acclaimed recent novels include South of the River and The Last Weekend. He is also a poet, critic, journalist and librettist. He lives in South London.