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.
Elliot Rappaport has sailed as a captain in the United States maritime industry since 1992, involved primarily in the training of other mariners aboard an assortment of traditional sailing ships. He is currently a faculty member at Maine Maritime Academy and has also worked extensively at the SEA Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Elliot lives in coastal Maine when not at sea.
His first book, Reading the Glass: A Sailor’s Story of Weather, was published in the UK by Sceptre in March 2023. This acclaimed work explores his life at sea, the history of seafaring, stories of explorers and discoveries and also provides a brilliant insight into the science of weather.
Vanessa, 25, is a climate activist from Uganda and founder of the Africa-based Rise Up Movement. She began striking for the climate in her home town of Kampala in January 2019, after witnessing droughts and flooding devastating communities in Uganda. She now campaigns internationally to highlight the impacts of climate change already playing out in Africa, as well as promoting key climate solutions such as educating girls. In 2020, Vanessa was named a UN Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as being listed one of the BBC’s 100 Women of the year and the 100 most influential young Africans. The FT named her one of 25 most influent women of 2021.
Her first book A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisiswas acquired in a nine-way auction by One Boat/Macmillan in the UK and published in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This rousing manifesto and memoir about climate justice shares a vision of hope on how we can – and must – build a livable future for all. Malala Yousafzai calls Vanessa ‘an indispensable voice for our future’ and Greta Thunberg praised the book for its reminder that ‘while we may all be in the same storm, we are not all in the same boat.’
