Simon Lancaster is one of the world’s top speechwriters. He first started writing speeches for Cabinet Ministers in Tony Blair’s Government in the late 1990s and he’s since gone on to write speeches for some of the biggest business leaders in the world, including the CEOs of Unilever, InterContinental Hotels and HSBC.
He has written three best-selling books on communication including Speechwriting: The Expert Guide(Hale, 2010), Winning Minds: Secrets from the Language of Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and You Are Not Human: How Words Kill (Biteback, 2018). He lectures at Cambridge University, is an Executive Fellow of Henley Business School and his 2016 Speak Like A Leader TEDx talk has received almost 4 million views.
His latest book, Connect, was published by Heligo Press in 2022 and explains that the secret of brilliant communication is all down to making connections.
K Patrick is a writer based in Scotland. Their work has appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry Review, Grantaand Five Dials, and was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize in 2021, the same year that K was also shortlisted for The White Review’s Short Story Prize. In 2023 they were shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award.
Their debut novel, Mrs S, published by Fourth Estate (UK) and Europa (US) was selected as an ObserverBest Debut of the Year, and K was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelists for 2023. Their debut poetry collection, Three Births, was published by Granta Poetry. It was longlisted for the 2024 Laurel Prize and shortlisted for Scotland’s National Book Awards. Their piece ‘Walk’ was selected for the Forward Book of Poetry 2025.
Arthur der Weduwen is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews and Deputy Director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue project. He is an expert on the history of the Netherlands and also writes more broadly on the history of publishing, news, libraries and politics. He is the author of five books, most recently The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale UP, 2019) and The Library: A Fragile History (Profile / Basic Books, 2021), both co-written with Andrew Pettegree. Commended by the judges as “wonderfully absorbing and wide-ranging”, The Librarywas longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown 2022.
Fernando Cervantes is Reader in History at the University of Bristol, and has a special interest in the intellectual and religious history of early modern Spain and Spanish America. His previous works include The Devil in the New World, Spiritual Encounters and Angels, Demons and the New World.
Dr Cervantes was the John Coffin Memorial Lecturer in the History of Ideas at the University of London in 2005 and has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA, and the Liguria Study Centre for the Arts and the Humanities, Bogliasco, Italy.
His new book, Conquistadores: A New History, was published by Allen Lane/Penguin in the UK in 2020 and by Viking in the US in September 2021. It was named a Book Of The Year 2020 by The Sunday Times,Times Literary Supplement, The Tablet and The Lady. “Enlightening … Conquistadores makes for fascinating reading” — Jude Webber, Financial Times.
Clara Kumagai is from Canada, Japan and Ireland. Her fiction and non-fiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Banshee, Room, The Kyoto Journal and Cicada, among others. Her short story, ‘A Girl Named Indigo’, was translated and published in Japanese as a picture book with the titleIndigo wo sagashite (Shogakukan, 2020). She was a recipient of a We Need Diverse Books Mentorship (with Nicola Yoon) and a finalist for the 2020 Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award.
Her debut YA novel, Catfish Rolling (Zephyr, 2023), blends magical realism with Japanese myth in an original story about grief and memory. US rights have been sold to Abrams Children’s and Canadian rights to Penguin Teen Canada.
Clara is also developing an essay collection centred around multiracial identity, hybridity and belonging. She lives in Ireland.
Jessica holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of St Andrews. Her research has won funding and prizes from the British Academy, the Society for Renaissance Studies, the Russell Trust and the University of St Andrews, among others. Her first book Between Popes, Inquisitors and Princes revealed how the first Jesuits collaborated with the Holy See and crowned heads of Europe, often undercover, to fight heresy after the Reformation. Jessica has since written on the political tumults and religious transformations of the early modern period for prestigious historical journals and well-loved magazines like History Today.
Jessica’s latest book, City of Echoes (Icon, 2023) is a history of papal Rome, from Saint Peter to our own day, with a particular focus on the ostensibly ordinary people who have shaped the life and character of this extraordinary city.
Cathy Thomas’ short fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, BANSHEE and Litro as well as shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Royal Academy and Pin Drop Award. She was selected for the 2014/15 Jerwood and Arvon Mentoring Scheme as a dramatist. She holds a Master’s degree in playwriting and screenwriting, has been selected for playwriting groups at the Royal Court Theatre and Lyric Hammersmith, and has had work staged at theatres including the Arcola, Rich Mix and Southwark Playhouse.
Her first book, Islanders, was published by Virago in 2022. Inspired by the author’s own experiences growing up in Guernsey, and following a tightly woven cast of friends and families over twenty years, Islanders explores the loneliness and the lure of small-island life.
Polly Barton is a writer and Japanese translator based in Bristol. In 2019, she won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and her debut book Fifty Sounds, a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, was published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo Editions in April 2021 and by Liveright in the US in early 2022. In 2022, Fifty Soundswas shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year.
Her translations have featured in Granta, Catapult, The White Review and Words Without Borders; and her full length translations include Spring Gardenby Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press, 2017), Wherethe Wild Ladies Areby Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press/Soft Skull, 2020), which was shortlisted for the Ray Bradbury Prize, and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Jobby Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Her new book, Porn: An Oral History, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) in March 2023 and is forthcoming from La Nave di Teseo in Italy.
Amy Key is a writer based in London. She is the author of Arrangements in Blue (Jonathan Cape, 2023), chosen as a Book of the Year by TheSunday Times, Independent, Irish Times and Granta and shortlisted by Foyles for their Non Fiction Book of the Year 2023. She is also the author of two collections of poetry,Luxe (Salt, 2013) and Isn’t Forever (Bloodaxe, 2018), which was a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice and a book of the year in the Guardian, New Statesman, Times and Irish Times. Her poems have been widely published and anthologised, and her essays have appeared in the collectionsAt The Pond(2019) and By the River (2024) published by Daunt, as well as Granta, Vogue,The Poetry Review and elsewhere.
Shilpa Ravella is a gastroenterologist and author. Her debut book, A Silent Fire: The Story of Inflammation, Diet & Disease was a best science pick by Nature and was shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Salon, Discover and USA Today, among other publications.
