Antony Easton worked as a graphic designer in both publishing and in the burgeoning independent video and television business in the 1980s, before joining the creative department at Saatchi & Saatchi, where he won several major international advertising awards on his way to becoming a Creative Director.
In 1994 he turned to directing commercials for clients as varied as the Guardian newspaper and the British Army. He has won awards for his short films and has written several film and TV scripts as well as making documentaries. Antony has also had three one-man art shows.
Following his father’s death in 2009, Antony became legally and then emotionally entangled with the hidden story of his father’s German ancestry. His quest to reveal its truths became an obsession, and led to the hit BBC History Podcast The House at No. 48. Following the success of the radio series, Antony was approached by a number of literary agents who urged him to tell his story. His book The House at No. 48 sold at auction to Head of Zeus/Bloomsbury and will be published in spring/summer 2028.
Ariel Saramandi is a Mauritian writer. She is a recipient of a grant from the Society of Authors Foundation for her essay collection,Portrait of an Island on Fire, which was published in 2025 by Fitzcarraldo Editions. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The Stinging Fly, Granta, The Dial and The White Review among many other places.
Dr Allan Kennedy is Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Dundee. He is a historian of early modern Scotland, with a particular interest in the seventeenth century. His work explores the nature of social and political power, and he is especially interested in understanding how pre-modern societies established and maintained order. His books and articles, as a result, often focus on deviance, criminality, and the justice system. He is always on the look-out for ways to share interesting and arresting stories from Scotland’s rich history.
Allan had published numerous magazine and newspaper articles, and has also appeared on a range of podcasts, including Not Just the Tudors and BBC History Extra. He is the author of two academic monographs, Governing Gaeldom: The Scottish Highlands and the Restoration State, 1660-1688 (2014) and Serious Crime in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland (2025), as well the textbook Early Modern Scotland: Themes in Focus (2026). He is also editor or co-editor of Life at the Margins in Early Modern Scotland (2024), Deviance and Marginality in Early Modern Scotland (2025), and the forthcoming The Scottish Privy Council from Revolution to Union.
He is at work on his first book for the general-trade market, Godly Dreams: Scotland and the Century that Made Britain, 1603-1707, to be published by Profile Books in 2028.
Seb Emina began his career as a writer and editor in 2005 when he founded a website called TheLondon Review of Breakfasts. It became something of a cult success, and was followed by a book entitled The Breakfast Bible (Bloomsbury, 2013), but, not wanting to be typecast, he left it behind and began writing on other subjects. Soon he became editor-in-chief of The Happy Reader, a literary magazine published by Penguin; it was a role he held for a decade, from its launch until its final issue in 2023.
These days he’s a regular name on many mastheads, not least those of Fantastic Man and The Gentlewoman, and his interviews with celebrities and other notable figures have led to him travelling to all places from Montecito in California (a session with Julia-Louis Dreyfus) to Mount Athos in Greece (several orthodox monks). His blogging roots are augmented by his magazine-making skills in the form of an email newsletter called Read Me. With Daniel John Jones, he’s the creator of artworks themed around everyday life and the cycles of clock time, most recently the Lovie-shortlisted Infraordinary FM. Originally from London, Seb now lives in Paris.
Emma Winter has a degree in American Literature and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and San Francisco State. Her short fiction has been published in journals such as Banshee, The Nottingham Review and Every Day, A Century, and her story ‘Grey, Orange on Maroon, No.8’ was shortlisted then highly commended for the 2026 Scottish Arts Trust Edinburgh Flash Fiction Awards.
Ruby Gray is a historian and presenter specialising in classic literature and social history. After completing her History of Science Masters at the University of Cambridge, she began a career in factual entertainment television. She worked on a range of productions, spanning history, health, travel and BBC Glastonbury coverage.
In May 2025 Ruby launched Too Long Didn’t Read on Instagram. In this series she dresses up as characters from classic literature and summarises their plots, with a mission to make classic literature more accessible to wider audiences. Ruby uses her producing experience to bring out the compelling parts of the story and immerse her viewers in alternate worlds. The series has led to press coverage, public speaking events and an affiliation with the National Gallery. Her videos have been played in school classrooms and have amassed over 18 million hits across social media platforms.
Ruby’s first book will be published by Penguin in Spring 2027.
Maddy Accalia (she/they) is an award-winning writer and producer from Brighton, working across theatre, fiction and poetry. Their plays have been performed at Vault Festival, Norwich Theatre and the Roundhouse, where they were a Resident Artist from 2021-3. As a poet, they have been published in Bath Magg and Ink Sweat and Tears, and were commissioned by University College Hospital London to write a poem for Our NHS Stories; a national campaign celebrating 75 years of the NHS. In 2024, Maddy was awarded a Developing Your Creative Practice Grant from Arts Council England to develop their fiction writing, and in 2025, they were made an awardee of the London Writers Award with the London Writers Centre.
Matt Oliver is Industry Editor at The Telegraph, where he covers manufacturing, energy policy, the automotive sector and the defence industry. He was previously a special correspondent at the paper and has reported on business for the Daily Mail and on politics and local government for the Oxford Mail. His journalism focuses on the industries and companies shaping Britain’s economy, along with the policies that govern them.
Matt’s first book will chart how entrepreneur Greg Jackson built Octopus Energy into Britain’s largest energy supplier in less than a decade.
Ricky Nathvani is an environmental data scientist and writer. He is currently Senior Geospatial Data Scientist at BirdsEyeView, where he forecasts the impacts of natural hazards and climate change around the world. Before getting swept up in the unstoppable tide of data, he started as a physicist with a Master’s from Oxford and a PhD from UCL.
Alongside his research career, Ricky has been a science communicator for over a decade. An awardee of the 2017 Naked Scientists Prize he produced and presented several popular science segments for BBC local radio. He has also written over 125 credited science videos for popular YouTube channels including SciShow, Crash Course, Study Hall and Veritasium, which have collectively amassed over 68 million views. His short story “Beam Therapy” was shortlisted for the Quantum Shorts fiction writing prize in 2017. He was scientific consultant for the 2023 BBC Radio 4 drama “What’s Love Got to Do with it?” and consultant script editor for the educational app “Operation Outbreak”.
He is currently working on the proposal for a book about healthy cities that was a recipient of the 2025 Wellcome Collection Non-Fiction Award.
Dr. Meredith Elkins is a clinical psychologist specializing in the research and treatment of anxiety and related disorders in children and families. She is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and the co-program director at the McLean Anxiety Mastery Program (MAMP) at McLean Hospital, an intensive outpatient program for youth with anxiety disorders. She has been featured in such media outlets as The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Parents, and Harvard Gazette.
