Christopher Paolini was born in Southern California and has lived most of his life in Paradise Valley, Montana. He published his first novel, Eragon, in 2003 at the age of nineteen, and quickly became a publishing phenomenon. His Inheritance Cycle—Eragon and its three sequels—have sold nearly 40 million copies worldwide. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars was his first adult novel.
Mary Gribbin works in education in East Sussex and writes books about science for children. She won The TES Junior Information Book Award for her book Time and the Universe, and has written a series of books for Ladybird. She has also worked with John Gribbin on Being Human, Ice Age, and major biographies of Richard Feynman and Robert FitzRoy, as well as the "in 90 minutes" series of mini-biographies of Galileo, Newton, Halley, Faraday, Darwin, Mendel, Curie, and Einstein.
She has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines including She, Cosmopolitan, and the Guardian, has a degree in psychology and has worked for twenty years with children of all ages from 4 to 16. In an earlier incarnation, she was at one time the youngest County
Paul Anthony Cartledge is the 1st A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University, having previously held a personal chair in Greek History at Cambridge. He was educated at St Paul's School & New College, Oxford where he took his 1st degree & completed his doctoral thesis in Spartan archaeology in 1975 under Prof. Sir John Boardman. After a period at the University of Warwick he moved in 10/79 to Cambridge University where he's a fellow of Clare College. He's a world expert on Athens & Sparta in the Classical Age & has been described as a Laconophile. He was chief historical consultant for the BBC TV series The Greeks & the Channel 4 series The Spartans, presented by Bettany Hughes. He's also a holder of the Gold Cross of t
Author of the well-reviewed novel The Mason of New Orleans, Charles M. Ryan also has more than 30 years' experience in the games industry. There he's created or contributed to nearly every class of tabletop game—board games, card games, trading card games, miniature games, and roleplaying games—and he’s garnered awards and recognition for game design, editing and development, graphic design, and fiction. As a businessman, he’s worked in every tier of the market, from running his own independent publishing firm, to serving as Hasbro’s global brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons, to heading up marketing at the UK’s Esdevium Games, one of the world’s largest game distributors. Charles served as Chairman of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts
