Ann Jungman was born in London, of German Jewish refugees. Before becoming an author, Ann trained as a lawyer and taught at a primary school. She has published over a hundred books including the Vlad the Drac series, The Most Magnificent Mosque, Resistance, Betrayal and Siege.

Emma Carroll is a bestselling author and the 'Queen of Historical Fiction' (BookTrust). She has been nominated for and the winner of numerous national, regional and schools awards - including the Books Are My Bag Readers' Award, Branford Boase, CILIP Carnegie Medal, Young Quills, Teach Primary and the Waterstones Book Prize.

Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna, but when the Nazis came to power her family fled to England and she was sent to boarding school. She became a writer while bringing up her four children, and her bestselling novels have been published around the world. Eva died peacefully in October 2010 at the age of eighty-five.

Kate Saunders is an author and journalist. She has worked for The Times, Sunday Times, Sunday Express, Daily Telegraph and Cosmopolitan amongst others, and has contributed to Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Start the Week.

She has written numerous books for adults and children, including the bestselling Night Shall Overtake Us, and her follow on to E Nesbit's Five Children and It stories, Five Children on the Western Front, which won the Costa Children's Book Award in 2014. She lives in London.

Kieran Larwood has been passionate about stories and storytelling ever since he first read The Hobbit aged six. He graduated from Southampton University with a degree in English Literature and now works as a Reception teacher in a primary school.

He lives on the Isle of Wight with his family, and between work, fatherhood and writing, doesn't get nearly enough sleep. Podkin One-Ear is Kieran's second book, and is the first in a new series.

Claire Barker is an author and illustrator. When she's not busy doing this she spends her days wrestling sheep, battling through nettle patches and triumphantly catching rogue chickens.

She used to live on narrow-boats but now lives with her delightful family on a small, untidy farm in deepest, darkest Devon. She is a regular helper at her local school and still loves nothing more than losing herself in a good story. Claire is the author of middle grade animal fantasy fiction series Knitbone Pepper.

Natasha Farrant was shortlisted for the Queen of Teen Award 2014, and the second Bluebell Gadbsy book, Flora in Love, was longlisted for the Guardian Children's Prize, while the third, All About Pumpkin, was WHSmith Book of the Month. Natasha is the author of the Carnegie-longlisted and Branford Boase-shortlisted YA historical novel The Things We Did For Love. She lives in London with her family.

Pip Jones lives in East London with her partner, her two daughters and a real invisible cat (it doesn't catch mice, but it doesn't need a litter tray either, so there are pros and cons).

She writes a lot. She even owns a writing cloak! And she spends days on end working out how to get good rhymes, such as 'snuffle' and 'kerfuffle', into stories. Pip won the inaugural Greenhouse Funny Prize in 2012 with Squishy McFluff, The Invisible Cat, her first book.

Martyn Ford is a 29-year-old journalist from Hampshire, where he writes for the Bordon Herald. His first book, It Happened to Me, a collection of shocking true stories, was published in 2010 by Summersdale.

In 2011 Martyn's TV script was in the finals of the BBC Laughing Stock Competition and he has since been in talks with the BBC about his writing.

His debut, The Imagination Box, received huge critical acclaim, which was followed by The Imagination Box: Beyond Infinity and The Imagination Box: A Mind of its Own. This his first standalone title.

Lou Kuenzler was raised on a remote farm on the edge of Dartmoor, before moving to Northern Ireland to study theatre.

She went on to work professionally as a theatre director, university lecturer and workshop leader in communities, schools and colleges, before turning her hand to writing a few years ago.

Shadow Snatcher is her second title for A & C Black.

Born in Trinidad, Ingrid Persaud won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017 and the BBC Short Story Award in 2018. She read law at the LSE and was a legal academic before taking degrees in fine art at Goldsmiths College and Central Saint Martins. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Prospect and Pree magazines. Ingrid lives in London and Barbados.

Lucy is a freelance illustrator based in Newcastle, specialising in work for the children’s market. She is of mixed Caribbean/English heritage, and is passionate about the need for more diversity in children’s publishing. Her illustrations are created using a mix of traditional and digital media – generally watercolour paintings, enhanced with PhotoShop brushes and found textures. She won first prize for illustration, in Faber Children’s inaugural FAB Prize competition, in 2017.

Aisha Bushby was selected as one of only four previously unpublished authors in the Stripes anthology for BAME writers, A Change is Gonna Come, alongside writers such as Patrice Lawrence, Tanya Byrne and Nikesh Shukla. The anthology was awarded a YA Book Prize Special Achievement Award.

Since then she has been taking part in panels, interviews and events across the UK, from Bristol Waterstones to Manchester Academy, Birmingham Literature Festival to Southbank YALW, BBC Radio 3 to Buzzfeed. A Pocketful of Stars is her debut novel.

Rashmi Sirdeshpande is a lawyer turned children's author who loves taking big ideas and making them accessible and exciting for young readers. She writes non-fiction picture books that ignite children's curiosity, as well as fictional stories that crackle with imagination. When she's not playing with words, you'll find her on her yoga mat twisting herself into all sort of shapes.

Michael E. Mann is Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State. He has received many honours and awards, including his selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002.

Additionally, he contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2018 he received the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union. In 2020 he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.

He is the author of numerous books, including Dire Predictions- understanding climate change and The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars- dispatches from the front lines. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

Hannah Lee was born in London, where she still lives. She always loved books, but yearned to see more stories that featured children like her - so now she is writing them!

My Hair is her debut picture book, which was Highly Commended in the 2017 FAB Prize for writing.