Jeanne Willis was born in St Albans, Herts, in 1959. As a young girl she sought adventures though writing comic strips and books.

After completing a copywriting course at Watford Art College she went on to work in advertising. Today, Jeanne is an internationally renowned, full-time writer and has published over a hundred books ranging from picture books including The Bog Baby and Who's in the Loo?, to YA, poetry and fiction.

She has won several awards, including the Children's Book Award, the Silver Smarties Prize and has also been shortlisted for the Whitbread Award.

As 50% of the Two Steves, Steve Barlow has written over 160 books with Steve Skidmore since their first published work appeared in 1988. Born in Crewe, he was educated at Crewe Grammar School, Warwick University and Nottingham University before a varied career in teaching, acting, stage management and puppetry.

He worked in a village school in Botswana for four years before returning to the UK and working with Steve Skidmore. The Two Steves tour extensively in the UK and overseas, and are frequent visitors to book festivals including Edinburgh and Hay.

Their work for Hachette includes the highly popular I Hero and Crime Team choose-your-adventure books, and their I Horror series is raising the short hairs at the back of readers' necks with Orchard Books.

Julia Donaldson is a top selling author of children’s books with over 65 million books sold worldwide. Among her greatest successes are Room on the Broom, The Gruffalo and Stick Man (all illustrated by Axel Scheffler), What the Ladybird Heard (illustrated by Lydia Monks) and The Giant Jumperee (illustrated by Helen Oxenbury). Julia’s books have been translated into over 72 languages.

Julia lives in the UK with her husband Malcolm and divides her time between Sussex in the South and Edinburgh in Scotland. From 2011 to 2013, she was the UK Children’s Laureate. Julia writes fiction, poems, plays and songs, as well as picture books. The TV films of The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom have both been nominated for Oscars.

Steve Skidmore writes with Steve Barlow. Together they are Britain's most popular comedy writing and performing double act for young people. Not surprisingly, they are known as The 2 Steves!

The 2 Steves met over twenty years ago when they were both teaching in Nottingham. Since then they have written over 160 books together. They have also acted as series editors on numerous reading programmes for several major publishing houses.

The 2 Steves are in great demand for author visits to schools, colleges and libraries across the world. They also undertake INSET events and make regular appearances at Literary Festivals.

Steve Skidmore is shorter than Steve Barlow and less hairy. He was born in Birstall near Leicester in England. After managing to pass some exams at school, he went on to Nottingham University to supposedly read English, but spent most of his time playing sport and doing a variety of summer jobs including counting pastry pie lids (yes, really).

He trained as a teacher of Drama, English and Film studies, before teaming up with Steve Barlow to become a full time author.

He lives in Leicester and is a great rugby fan (he supports Leicester Tigers - "Come on you Tiiiiigeeeers!").

Vivian French is a highly acclaimed children's author who has written more than 250 books during the course of her career, including Caterpillar, Butterfly, The Tales from the Five Kingdoms series and Yucky Worms.

Her recent work includes the critically acclaimed picture book The Most Wonderful Thing in the World and junior fiction The Adventures of Alfie Onion, The Cherry Pie Princess and The Witches' Midnight Feast.

Vivian teaches on the illustration course at Edinburgh School of Art, and helped to found the mentoring scheme Picture Hooks for aspiring young illustrators. She lives in Edinburgh

Geraldine McCaughrean is a multi-award-winning author of picture books, fiction and retellings for children. She has won the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award and the Blue Peter Special Book to Keep Forever Award.

She is also a three-time winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award and a four-time winner of the Smarties Bronze Award. Her titles include the bestselling The Orchard Book of Greek Myths and The Orchard Book of Roman Myths. She lives in Berkshire.