Will Hodgkinson was born in Newcastle and brought up in Richmond, Surrey. He is the author of Guitar Man (2006), Song Man (2007) and The Ballad Of Britain (2009), and presented the Sky Arts television series Songbook. He has written for the Guardian, Mojo and Vogue and is currently the chief rock & pop critic for The Times. He lives in Peckham, southeast London with his wife and two children.
Matthew Plampin is the author of several highly acclaimed historical novels, most recently Will and Tom and Mrs Whistler. He has a PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art and has worked as a lecturer, tour guide and children’s author. He lives in London with his wife and son.
Christina Baker Kline is the author of six novels. She lives out-side of New York City and on the coast of Maine.
Cherise Wolas’s acclaimed first novel, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a semi-finalist for the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. A native of Los Angeles, she lives in New York City with her husband. The Family Tabor is her second novel.
James Smythe is the winner of the Wales Fiction Book of the Year 2013, and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2014. He is the author of The Testimony, The Machine and No Harm Can Come To A Good Man, as well as The Anomaly Quartet, which currently includes the novels The Explorer and The Echo. James lives in London and teaches creative writing. He can be found on Twitter @jpsmythe
Andrea Bennett graduated from the University of Sheffield in History & Russian and then spent a good part of the “Yeltsin years” living and working in Russia. She lives in Ramsgate, Kent, with her family and dog. Her first novel is Galina Petrovna’s Three-Legged Dog Story.
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the award-winning series The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and he now devotes his time to the writing of fiction, including the 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie series. He is the author of over eighty books on a wide array of subjects, and his work has been translated into forty-six languages. Before becoming a full-time writer he was for many years Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh.
Jane Austen (1775–1817) was an English novelist whose work centred on social commentary and realism. Her works of romantic fiction are set among the landed gentry, and she is one of the most widely read writers in English literature.
ROBERT LAUTNER was born in Middlesex in 1970. Before becoming a writer he owned his own comic-book store, worked as a wine merchant, photographic consultant and recruitment consultant. He now lives on the Pembrokeshire coast in a wooden cabin with his wife and children. He is the author of The Road to Reckoning, which was a Simon Mayo Book Club choice, and The Draughtsman, which was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Quint is his third novel.
Louisa Young was born in London and read history at Cambridge. She co-wrote the Lionboy series with her daughter, and is the author of eight further books including the bestselling My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award, and was a Richard and Judy Book Club choice, and its acclaimed sequels The Heroes’ Welcome and Devotion. Her work is published in 36 languages. She lives in London.
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore is the author of three novels, including The Effects of Light and Set Me Free, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, for the best book of fiction by an American woman published in 2007. A recipient of the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, she lives and writes in Brooklyn and Vermont.
Kathleen Alcott’s first novel, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets, published in 2012. Her fiction, criticism, and essay appear in publications including The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Coffin Factory, The Rumpus, Explosion Proof, Five Chapters, and elsewhere. Born in Northern California in 1988, she currently resides in Brooklyn.
Rosie Garland has published five solo collections of poetry and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized. She is is the author of Vixen and her debut novel, The Palace of Curiosities won Book of the Year in the Co-op Respect Awards 2013 and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. Her next novel is The Night Brother and will be published in 2017.
