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 Ireland, Japan and Canada. Her debut YA novel, Catfish Rolling (Zephyr, 2023), was a YOTO Carnegie Medal nominee, shortlisted for the Great Reads Award and winner of the 2024 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Books of the Year. Her sophomore novel, Songs for Ghosts, was longlisted for the YOTO Carnegie Medal for fiction and the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize 2026. 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 literary translator from the Japanese. Her translations include Butter by Asako Yuzuki, Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura. She has published two works of non-fiction, Fifty Sounds (Fitzcarraldo, 2021), which won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and Porn: An Oral History (Fitzcarraldo, 2023). What Am I A Deer? (Fitzcarraldo, 2026) is her debut novel.
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.
