Born in Belfast, Martin Waddell was an aspiring football player for many years, before turning his hand to writing. He is now widely regarded as one of the greatest living children's writers, and has over 220 published titles to his name.

He is perhaps best known for Owl Babies, illustrated by Patrick Benson and Farmer Duck, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury; as well as the 1989 Kurt Maschler Award-winning The Park in the Dark and the Little Bear series, both illustrated by Barbara Firth.

In 2004, Martin received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for his lasting contribution to children's literature, the highest career recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. He lives in Newcastle, County Durham.

Tony Bradman has worked in children's books for over 30 years as a writer, a reviewer, and an editor of anthologies.

His books include the Dilly the Dinosaur picture-book series, which sold 2 million copies worldwide.Tony is lead author for Project X, OUP's reading scheme for boys up to Year 6.

He has been a judge for the Smarties Book Prize, Booktrust Teen Awards and is chair of the Siobhan Dowd Trust. Anglo-Saxon Boy is his second novel for Walker. He lives in Beckenham, Kent.

Philippa Pearce and illustrator Helen Craig share two grandsons, Nat and Will, the sons of their children Sally and Ben. Philippa wrote A Finder's Magic for Helen to illustrate, and the name of the book's hero, "Tillawn" (Till), is an amalgam of the boys' names.

The peculiar relationship between the old and the very young is a constant theme in Philippa's writing and when, late in life, she had the "unexpected delight" of two small grandsons, it gave her a renewed burst of creative energy.

She called being a grandmother "a privilege, a rare, almost inexplicable pleasure - not just fun but something different, more." Philippa Pearce died in December 2006. The Philippa Pearce Memorial Lecture is held annually in September.

Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children’s author and poet who will be remembered for the depth and breadth of her fiction. Rich and intricate, yet narrated with a deceptive simplicity that made all of her work accessible and heartfelt, her writing stood out for the fluidity and lyricism of her prose, and her extraordinary ability to capture the presence of the past.

Her first novel, Zennor in Darkness, explored the events which led D. H. Lawrence to be expelled from Cornwall on suspicion of spying, and won the McKitterick Prize. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and she went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller with The Siege, which was described by Antony Beevor as a ‘world-class novel’ and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize. Published in 2010, her eleventh novel, The Betrayal, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Lie in 2014 was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the 2015 RSL Ondaatje Prize.

Her final novel, Birdcage Walk, deals with legacy and recognition – what writers, especially women writers, can expect to leave behind them – and was described by the Observer as ‘the finest novel Helen Dunmore has written’.

Helen was known to be an inspirational and generous author, championing emerging voices and other established authors. She also gave a large amount of her time to supporting literature, independent bookshops all over the UK, and arts organisations across the world. She died in June 2017.