Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa in 1981 while Somalia was falling deeper into dictatorship. In 1986 she moved to London with her family in what she thought was a temporary move but a couple of years later it became permanent as war broke out in Somalia. She was educated in London and went to Oxford to study History and Politics and she finally returned to Hargeisa, now in the new Republic of Somaliland, in 2008. She lives in London and is currently working on her third novel.
Francine Prose is the author of eighteen books of fiction, including Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her short story ‘The Mirror’ appeared in the short story collection Reader, I Married Him (2016). She lives in New York City.
Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, poet and children’s writer, who will be remembered for the wisdom, lyricism, compassion and immersive beauty of her writing. In her lifetime, she published eight collections of poetry, many novels for both adults and children, and two collections of short stories. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction with her novel A Spell of Winter, and her novel The Siege was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction.
Jon Teckman was born in Northampton in 1963. He served as an advisor on film policy to both Conservative and Labour governments before becoming Chief Executive of the British Film Institute in 1999. He now lives in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire with his wife Anne and sons Joseph and Matthew. Ordinary Joe is his first novel.
Juno Dawson is the international bestselling author of Young Adult novels and non-fiction, including the bestselling CLEAN and THIS BOOK IS GAY, as well as a novelist, screenwriter, journalist, and a columnist for Attitude Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Glamour, Dazed, Grazia and the Guardian, and she and was chosen by Val McDermid as one of the ten most compelling LGBTQ+ writers working in the UK today.
