Catherine Menon is Australian-British, has Malaysian heritage and lives in London. She is a University lecturer in robotics and has both a PhD in pure mathematics and an MA in Creative Writing. Fragile Monsters is her debut novel.

Her short story collection, Subjunctive Moods, was published by Dahlia Publishing in 2018. Her short stories have won or been placed in a number of competitions, including the Fish, Bridport, Bare Fiction and Short Fiction Journal awards. Her work has been broadcast on radio, and she’s been a judge for several international short fiction competitions.

Courttia Newland is the author of nine books including his debut, The Scholar and the story collection, Cosmogramma. His work has appeared in many anthologies and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He is co-editor of the seminal IC3 The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, spanning poetry, short fiction, memoir and essays. As a screenwriter he has co-written for the awarding winning BBC series Small Axe and The Woman in the Wall. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Kingston University and his latest novel, A River Called Time (2021), was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award Science Fiction Book of the Year in 2022. His essay collection, The Art of Opposition: On Hope, Resilience, and Creative Expression Beyond the Mainstream publishes with Faber and Faber, July 2026.

Deepa’s debut novel Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line was named as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time and NPR. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. Time included it in ‘The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time’. It has been translated into over twenty languages.

Anappara is the co-editor of Letters to a Writer of Colour (2023), a collection of personal essays on fiction, race, and culture. 

Her second novel, The Last of Earth, was one of BBC’s ‘12 books to read in 2026’.

She was born in Kerala, southern India. Her journalism on the impact of poverty and religious violence on the education of children won the Developing Asia Journalism Awards, the Every Human has Rights Media Awards, and the Sanskriti-Prabha Dutt Fellowship in Journalism. 

Heidi James is a prize-winning author, essayist, poet and podcaster. Her critically acclaimed novels include: The Mesmerist’s Daughter, Carbon, Wounding, So The Doves, and most recently, The Sound Mirror which has been described as ‘An exhilarating, heart-rending work’ by The Irish Times and as ‘An exceptional novel’ by The Guardian. She hosts the wonderful podcast, First Graft, inspiring and supporting all creatives with their first draft anxieties. She lectures in Creative Writing and English Literature and hosts writing and artists retreats in Sussex.

Hester Musson's debut novel, The Beholders, was a Times bestseller, a Sunday Times historical book of the month and shortlisted for the HWA Debut Crown in 2024. Her second novel, The Night Hag, was published in February 2026.

She grew up in Leicestershire and studied English Literature at Bristol University, later completing a master's in drama at the RCS in Glasgow. She was an actress and autocue operator (among other things) in London before writing full time and now lives in Scotland. https://www.hestermusson.com/