Jane Rogers has written six novels including Mr Wroe's Virgins (dramatised as an award-winning television serial) and Promised Lands, which won the Writers' Guild Best Novel Award 1996. She also writes for TV and radio, and teaches at Sheffield Hallam University.

Trevor Hoyle was born in Lancashire, and started out as an actor before moving to the other side of the screen as a full-time writer. His award-winning short fiction and novels range from hard-edged thrillers to comedy to science fiction, including his most recent blockbuster, the eco-thriller The Last Gasp. He has also written for the radio (his first radio play, GIGO, won the Radio Times Drama Award) and TV, including the cult TV series Blake's 7; his bestselling novelisations include Blake's 7, which he co-wrote with Terry Nation, the show's creator, followed by Blake's 7: Project Avalon and Blake's 7: Scorpio Attack.

His novel Rule of Night was a Time Out Book of the Week. He's also won the Transatlantic Review Erotic Fiction Award and the Ray Mort Northern Novel Award. After travelling the world, he returned to his roots, and once again lives in Lancashire.

Stella Duffy has written thirteen novels, over fifty short stories, and ten plays. She has twice won Stonewall Writer of the Year and twice won the CWA Short Story Dagger.

HBO have optioned her two Theodora novels for television. In addition to her writing work, Stella is a theatre-maker and the co-director of the national Fun Palaces campaign for greater access to culture for all.

She was awarded an OBE in 2016 for her services to the Arts. 

Alison MacLeod is the author of three novels The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels and Unexploded, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013 and two story collections. She is the joint winner of the Eccles British Library Writer's Award 2016 and was a finalist for the 2017 Governor General's Award. She was Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester until 2018, when she became Visiting Professor to write full-time. She lives in Brighton.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce is a successful British screenwriter whose film credits include Welcome to Sarajevo, Hilary and Jackie and 24 Hour Party People. Millions, his debut chidlren's novel, won the 2004 Carnegie Medal and was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award.

His second novel, Framed, was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Children's Fiction Award and has also been shortlisted for the 2005 Carnegie Medal. His third novel, Cosmic, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize.

Frank has also written a sensational sequel to the much-loved Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the heartwarming Runaway Robot.

Kate Clanchy is a writer, teacher and journalist. Her novel Meeting the English was shortlisted for the Costa Prize.

Her short story 'The Not-Dead and the Saved' won both the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award and the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize.

Her BBC 3 radio programme about her work with students was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes prize.

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She is the prize-winning author of five novels - Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, The Carhullan Army, How to Paint a Dead Man and The Wolf Border - as well as The Beautiful Indifference, a collection of short stories, which won the Portico Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize.

The first story in the collection, 'Butchers Perfume', was also shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award - a prize Hall won in 2013 with 'Mrs Fox', which was included in her 2017 collection, Madame Zero.