Will Boast was born in England and grew up in Ireland and Wisconsin. His short story collection, Power Ballads, won the 2011 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for a California Book Award. He is the author of Epilogue, a memoir (2014).

His fiction and essays have appeared in Best New American Voices and the New York Times, among other publications. He has been a Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of three novels and several stage plays and radio dramas. Awards she has received include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, and the BBC Stewart Parker Award.

Her most recent novel, All the Beggars Riding, was chosen for Belfast's One City One Book campaign in 2013 and shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was followed by her acclaimed debut collection of short stories, Multitudes, 2016.

Ross Raisin's first novel, God's Own Country, was published in 2008 and was shortlisted for nine literary awards, including the Guardian First Book Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2009 Ross Raisin was named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.

In 2013 he was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British writers. His third novel has recently been published to great acclaim. He lives in London and teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths University and as part of the UEA-Guardian Masterclasses programme.

VEE WALKER is a natural storyteller and an experienced museums and heritage consultant. While working on her first book she discovered an unknown family tragedy that ultimately led her to spend seven years researching and writing Major Tom's War.

This novel is based on her grandfather's war diary scrapbook, which was assembled by her grandmother, Evie.