Russell Hoban is the author of many famous novels, including Turtle Diary and Riddley Walker, which won the John W. Campbell Award for science fiction.

He also wrote over 50 children’s books, including such classics as The Mouse and His Child, The Sea-Thing Child and, most recently, Rosie’s Magic Horse and Soonchild.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1925, he moved in 1969 to London, where he lived until his death in 2011.

Alexis Deacon is a writer and illustrator of children’s books. His first book Slow Loris, published in 2002, was in 2015 named by Time Magazine as one of the hundred best children's books of all time. In 2008 he was chosen as one of Booktrust’s ten best new illustrators of the preceding decade.