Malorie Blackman has written over seventy books for children and young adults, including the Noughts & Crosses series, Thief and a science-fiction thriller, Chasing the Stars.

Many of her books have also been adapted for stage and television, including a BAFTA-award-winning BBC production of Pig-Heart Boy and a Pilot Theatre stage adaptation by Sabrina Mahfouz of Noughts & Crosses. There is also a major BBC production of Noughts & Crosses, with Roc Nation (Jay-Z’s entertainment company) curating the soundtrack as executive music producer.

In 2005 Malorie was honoured with the Eleanor Farjeon Award in recognition of her distinguished contribution to the world of children’s books. In 2008 she received an OBE for her services to children’s literature, and between 2013 and 2015 she was the Children’s Laureate.

Most recently Malorie wrote for the Doctor Who series on BBC One, and the fifth novel in her Noughts & Crosses series, Crossfire, was published by Penguin Random House Children’s in summer 2019.

Cathy Rentzenbrink has lived in Cornwall, Yorkshire and London and recently returned to Cornwall, where she lives with her family and works as a writer and journalist. She is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling memoir The Last Act of Love, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize and selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club.

Lisa McInerney is from Galway.

She is the author of The Glorious Heresies, which won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize for first novels. Her mother is still unimpressed.

Louise Doughty is the author of seven novels, including Apple Tree Yard, published by Faber & Faber, which was a top 10 bestseller in UK and Ireland and has been published or is being translated into twenty-two languages.

It was longlisted for The Guardian Not-the-Booker prize and shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award and the National Book Awards Thriller of the Year.

Apple Tree Yard is her first novel since Whatever You Love, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and columnist. Maggie & Me, his memoir about comingof age and coming out in Thatcher's Britain, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Memoir of the Year, and wonthe Paddy Power Political Books 'Satire' Award and Stonewall Writer of the YearAward.

Damian writes columns for the BigIssue and High Life and oftenappears on BBC Radio 4. He is creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. You Will Be Safe Here is his debut novel. Damian Barr lives in Brighton.