Marina Warner's study of the Arabian Nights, Stranger Magic (2011) won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2013; in 2015 she was awarded the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities and was made DBE.

She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Fellow of the British Academy and President of the Royal Society of Literature.

China Miéville lives and works in London. He is three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice.

The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell and Philip K. Dick. His novel Embassytown was a first and widely praised foray into science fiction.

Frances Hardinge spent her childhood in a huge old house that inspired her to write strange stories from an early age. She read English at Oxford University, then got a job at a software company. However, by this time a persistent friend had finally managed to bully Frances into sending a few chapters of Fly By Night, her first children's novel, to a publisher. Macmillan made her an immediate offer. The book went on to publish to huge critical acclaim and win the Branford Boase First Novel Award. Known for her beautiful use of language, she has since written many critically acclaimed novels, including A Skinful of Shadows, Verdigris Deep, Cuckoo Song, and the Costa Award-winning The Lie Tree.

Journalist and comedian Sami Shah is an ex-Muslim from Pakistan living in Australia. Since moving here in 2012, he has been profiled in the New York Times and on Australian Story, and is a regular guest and presenter on radio and TV, including ABC News Breakfast, The Project, RN's Sunday Extra and Melbourne 774.

Previously he wrote and presented A Beginners Guide to Pakistan on BBC Radio 4 and has appeared on Stephen Fry's QI.

Sami's autobiography, I, Migrant, was shortlisted in 2015 in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and for the Russell Prize for Humour Writing. In 2016 he wrote and presented a 5-part documentary on Islam in Australia for Radio National. He lives in Melbourne.

Omar Robert Hamilton is an award-winning filmmaker and writer.

He has written for the Guardian, the London Review of Books and Guernica.

He co-founded the Mosireen media collective in Cairo and the Palestine Festival of Literature.

This is his debut novel.