Lucy Wood is the author of a critically acclaimed collection of short stories, Diving Belles and a novel Weathering. She has been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and was a runner-up in the BBC National Short Story Award. She has also been awarded the Holyer an Gof Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. Lucy Wood has a Master's degree in creative writing from Exeter University. She lives in Cornwall.

Lionel Shriver's novels include the National Book Award finalist So Much for That, the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World, and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian and the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.

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.

Lavinia Greenlaw has published five collections of poetry, most recently A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde. Her first novel, Mary George of Allnorthover, received France's Prix du Premier Roman Etranger. Her two books of nonfiction are The Importance of Music to Girls and Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland. Her writing has appeared in frieze, the London Review of Books and the New Yorker, among other publications.