Cressida Cowell is the author and the illustrator of the bestselling How to Train Your Dragon book series, and the author of the Emily Brown picture books, illustrated by Neal Layton.

How to Train Your Dragon has sold over 8 million books worldwide in 37 languages. It is also an award-winning DreamWorks film series, and a TV series shown on Netflix and CBBC. The first book in Cressida's new series, Wizards of Once, publishes in September 2017.

Cressida is an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency and a founder patron of the Children's Media Foundation. She has won numerous prizes for her books, including the Gold Award in the Nestle Children's Book Prize and 'Philosophy Now' magazine's 2015 'Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity'.

She grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland and she now lives in Hammersmith with her husband, three children and a dog called Pigeon.

Neal Layton has illustrated more than 40 books, working with award-winning authors such as Cressida Cowell, Michael Rosen and Roger McGough.

He has won the Smarties Book Prize twice, for Bartholomew and the Bug, and Oscar and Arabella, both of which he wrote and illustrated, and won the same award for That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown, written by Cressida Cowell.

He has won numerous other awards both in the UK and overseas, and been shortlisted for many more, including the Red House and Blue Peter book awards and the Booktrust Early Years Award. He lives with his family in Portsmouth.