Lucy Ann Unwin

Lucy's debut novel for children The Octopus, Dadu and Me was shortlisted for multiple awards, including The Brilliant Book Awards. Her background is in journalism. She was a music journalist at BBC 6 Music for 10 years, where she was privileged enough to interview the likes of Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Adele and absorb hundreds of hours of wonderful live music.

Brought up in Birmingham, Lucy has lived all around the UK, from Newcastle to Brixton, Worcester to Chesterfield. She also lived for a year in the Chilean city of Valparaiso, and for three years in San Francisco. She has now settled on the Sussex clifftops with her husband and two daughters (and tortoise), where she divides her time between writing, editing and reading as muc

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Emily Randall-Jones

Emily has worked as a touring actor, a princess at Hampton Court and for the National Trust creating experiences for visitors. She’s the winner of both the Mslexia Children’s and YA Novel as well as being longlisted for the Branford Boase award. 'The Scream of the Whistle' - another ghostly MG - is out June 25. She's a proudly neurodivergent single mum and can usually be found foraging for hag stones.
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Geraldine McCaughrean

Geraldine McCaughrean is a British children's novelist. She has written more than 170 books, including Peter Pan in Scarlet (2004), the official sequel to Peter Pan commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the holder of Peter Pan's copyright. Her work has been translated into 44 languages worldwide. She has received the Carnegie Medal twice and the Michael L. Printz Award among others.
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David Almond

David Almond is a British children's writer who has penned several novels, each one to critical acclaim. He was born and raised in Felling and Newcastle in post-industrial North East England and educated at the University of East Anglia. When he was young, he found his love of writing when some short stories of his were published in a local magazine. He started out as an author of adult fiction before finding his niche writing literature for young adults.

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E.M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster, generally published as E.M. Forster, was an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. His humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".

He had five novels published in his lifetime, achieving his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924) which takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj.

Forster's views as a secular humanist are at the heart of his work, which often depicts the pursuit of person
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Frank Cottrell Boyce

Frank Cottrell Boyce is a British screenwriter, novelist and occasional actor.

In addition to original scripts, Cottrell Boyce has also adapted novels for the screen and written children's fiction, winning the 2004 Carnegie Medal for his debut, Millions, based on his own screenplay for the film of the same name.
His novel Framed was shortlisted for the Whitbread Book of the Year as well as the Carnegie Medal.
He adapted the novel into a screenplay for a 2009 BBC television film. His 2009 novel Cosmic has also been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

He is married and the father of seven children.
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Alastair Chisholm

Alastair is an award-winning children's author and puzzle creator. He's the author of the sci-fi middle-grade adventures ORION LOST and ADAM-2 , and children's picture books THE PRINCE AND THE WITCH AND THE THIEF AND THE BEARS and INCH AND GRUB, as well as books of Sudoku, Kakuro and other puzzles, including the Kids' Book of Sudoku and Kids' Book of Kakuro series.

Alastair lives in Edinburgh with his wife (who is lovely), two children (who are lovely but very loud), and a cat who is yowling at him even though there is clearly food in her bowl, look, it’s right there, *look*.

You can follow him on Twitter at @alastair_ch
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Anthony McGowan

Anthony John McGowan is an English author of books for children, teenagers and adults. He is the winner of the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Lark. In addition to his 2020 win, he has been twice longlisted (for The Knife That Killed Me in 2008 and Brock in 2014) and once shortlisted (for Rook in 2018) for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, and is the winner of the 2006 Booktrust Teenage Prize for Henry Tumour.
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Alex T. Smith

Alex T. Smith is the creator of the much-loved and bestselling Claude fiction series for early readers. He was the official World Book Day illustrator in 2014, and other recent accolades include the UKLA Picture Book Award for Little Red and the Very Hungry Lion and the Children’s Book of the World Illustration Award for illustrating Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians. When not working, Alex enjoys doodling in his sketchbook, reading, people-watching, and eavesdropping. He lives under the watchful eye of his small canine companions, who are a constant source of inspiration to him.
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P.G. Bell

P.G. Bell is a native of south Wales, where he was raised on a diet of Greek mythology, ghost stories and Doctor Who. He's had all sorts of jobs over the years, from lifeguard to roller coaster operator, but all he's ever really wanted to do is write stories for a living. And now he does! He lives in Wales with his wife Anna and their two children.
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Piers Torday

Piers Torday is an award-winning and best-selling children's writer. Books include The Last Wild, The Dark Wild, The Wild Beyond, The Wild Before, There May Be a Castle, The Lost Magician, and The Frozen Sea, with his latest one, Midnight Treasure, out in September 2024. His work has been translated into 14 languages.

His plays include The Box of Delights (Wilton’s/RSC), Christmas Carol, The Child in the Snow, and The Wind in the Wilton’s (Wilton’s Music Hall). The Little Angel Theatre has adapted his book There May Be a Castle for the stage.

The son of Paul Torday (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), he completed his father’s final unfinished novel, The Death of an Owl and co-founded the Paul Torday Memorial Prize for Debut Novelists over 60.

He ha
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Polly Ho-Yen

Polly Ho-Yen was born in Northampton and brought up in Buckinghamshire. She studied English at Birmingham University before working in publishing for several years.

Her first novel, Boy in the Tower, published in July 2014 by Random House Children's Publishers, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. Her second novel Where Monsters Lie was published in 2016 and her third novel, Fly Me Home, was published in 2017. Both of these novels were also nominated for the Carnegie Medal.

She now writes full-time and lives in Bristol with her husband.
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M.G. Leonard

M. G. Leonard is a writer of books, poems and screenplays. She has a first-class honours degree in English literature and an MA in Shakespeare Studies from Kings College London. She works as a freelance Digital Media Producer for clients such as the National Theatre, and Harry Potter West End, and previously worked as a Senior Digital Producer at the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House and Shakespeare’s Globe. She spent her early career in the music industry running Setanta Records, an independent record label, and managing bands, most notably The Divine Comedy. After leaving the music industry, she trained as an actor, dabbling in directing and producing as well as performing, before deciding to write her stories down. Maya lives in Br
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Matt Goodfellow

Matt Goodfellow was a primary school teacher for more than ten years before becoming a full-time poet and author. Shu Lin’s Grandpa is his first book with Candlewick Press. He lives with his wife and children in Manchester, England.
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Pádraig Kenny

Pádraig Kenny is an Irish writer who hails from Newbridge in County Kildare.

His debut novel Tin was published in 2018 and was Waterstones Children’s Book of the Month. It has been nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal and several other awards.

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Katya Balen

Katya Balen is a British author of children's literature. She was born in 1989, in London. Her novel October, October won the 2022 Carnegie Medal. Her work has also been nominated for the Branford Boase Award and the Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation.
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Susan Brownrigg

Susan Brownrigg is a Lancashire lass. She is the author of the Gracie Fairshaw mystery series - set in 1930s Blackpool - and Kintana and the Captain's Curse, a pirate treasure hunt with lemurs set in Madagascar.
Susan is a member of SCBWI British Isles and featured in the Undiscovered Voices 2016 anthology. She was awarded the Margaret Carey Scolarship in 2015.
Susan has worked as a journalist and sub-editor, she also worked in a number of heritage and wildlife education roles including jobs at Blackpool Zoo, Tatton Park, Quarry Bank Mill and Norton Priory Museum & Gardens. She now works as a library assistant.
She is a member of the Time Tunnellers historical authors group.
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Mel Taylor-Bessent

Founder of the hugely successful Authorfy and Little Star Writing, Mel Taylor-Bessent has made her career connecting readers to their favourite authors and encouraging children to write for pleasure. After gaining a Creative Writing degree, Mel launched her first business at the age of 22 and ran creative writing workshops for thousands of children aged 6-12. As a result, she also arranged hundreds of author events and witnessed first-hand the positive impact these interactions had on her students.

In 2017, she decided to replicate this via online ‘Author Masterclasses’ on a website she created called Authorfy.com. Since then, Authorfy has gone on to win numerous awards, partner with the likes of World Book Day and BookTrust, and is used in
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Ayaan Mohamud

Ayaan Mohamud wrote her first ever book in lockdown and during NaNoWriMo, while also studying as a medical student, and it became her debut novel. It was inspired by her own experiences of Islamophobia and a desire to write about Somali culture which she hopes to shine more of a light on in YA. She lives in London and can usually be found either writing or complaining about writing. When she isn't doing either of those things, you may find her simply annoying her sisters or daydreaming.
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Niyla Farook

Niyla Farook is a young writer of South Asian descent living in England. She works full-time at a hospital pharmacy whilst also volunteering for the United Nations when she's not writing. RIDA AND MADIYA is her debut book.
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Emily Randall-Jones

Emily has worked as a touring actor, a princess at Hampton Court and for the National Trust creating experiences for visitors. She’s the winner of both the Mslexia Children’s and YA Novel as well as being longlisted for the Branford Boase award. 'The Scream of the Whistle' - another ghostly MG - is out June 25. She's a proudly neurodivergent single mum and can usually be found foraging for hag stones.
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Margaret McDonald

Margaret McDonald is a Scottish author from Glasgow. She has been published in various poetry and prose magazines, including The Manifest Station, In Parentheses, Breath and Shadow, and Bandit Fiction. She is a first-generation university student and holds an MLitt in English Literature with distinction (Glasgow University) and a first class B.A Honours in Creative Writing with English Literature (Strathclyde University). She writes about the working class experience, the student experience, and the Scottish healthcare system as a former NHS employee and disabled author. Glasgow Boys is her debut.
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Sarah Merrett

Sarah grew up in Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. She went to art school and gained three degrees from different universities. She loves animals, being out in nature, and doing all kinds of creative things. In between writing children’s stories, she can often be found creating with Lego, getting muddy in her garden, or wielding a power tool. She has worked as a bookseller and a school librarian. She lives in rural Hampshire with her two children and one husband.
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Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sarahmerrett...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahmerrett1/
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Sarah Merrett

Sarah grew up in Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. She went to art school and gained three degrees from different universities. She loves animals, being out in nature, and doing all kinds of creative things. In between writing children’s stories, she can often be found creating with Lego, getting muddy in her garden, or wielding a power tool. She has worked as a bookseller and a school librarian. She lives in rural Hampshire with her two children and one husband.
X: https://x.com/sjmerrett1
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sarahmerrett...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahmerrett1/
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Susan Brownrigg

Susan Brownrigg is a Lancashire lass. She is the author of the Gracie Fairshaw mystery series - set in 1930s Blackpool - and Kintana and the Captain's Curse, a pirate treasure hunt with lemurs set in Madagascar.
Susan is a member of SCBWI British Isles and featured in the Undiscovered Voices 2016 anthology. She was awarded the Margaret Carey Scolarship in 2015.
Susan has worked as a journalist and sub-editor, she also worked in a number of heritage and wildlife education roles including jobs at Blackpool Zoo, Tatton Park, Quarry Bank Mill and Norton Priory Museum & Gardens. She now works as a library assistant.
She is a member of the Time Tunnellers historical authors group.
Buy books on Amazon