Ben Martynoga is a biologist and award-winning science writer. He has a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford and a PhD in neurobiology from the University of Edinburgh, and he has worked at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai and the National Institute for Medical Research and the Francis Crick Institute, both in London.
After a decade at the leading edge of neuroscience and genome research, he swapped his white coat for a pen. In 2023 he launched the award-winning Explodapediabook series, introducing young readers to biology’s biggest ideas. One of the books in the series, The Gene, was awarded the Association of Science Educators ‘Book of The Year’ in 2023. His writing on science, nature and the environment appears in the Guardian, New Statesman, the Financial Times and beyond. An engaging speaker, he shares his passion for science and its impacts with audiences of all ages.
Ben is currently at work on his first book for adults, No Small Matter: The New Science and Unseen Power of the Earth’s Microbiome. He lives, works, wanders and wonders in the Lake District.
Emma Chapman is a British writer, currently living in North Yorkshire. She was born in 1985 and grew up near Manchester. She studied English Literature at Edinburgh University, and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway.
Since leaving university, she has lived in London, Western Australia and Indonesia. In 2013, her first novel, How To Be A Good Wife, was published by Picador to critical acclaim, with reviews in The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The New York Times, amongst others. It was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and was chosen as a Target Book Club title. It sold in nine territories. Hilary Mantel called it ‘an impressive debut from a writer who shows insight and power’.
Her second novel,The Last Photograph, about a British photojournalist’s experiences during the Vietnam War, was published in 2016, also by Picador.
Simon Parker is a British travel writer, author, filmmaker, public speaker and broadcast journalist; and has reported from over 100 countries in the past decade – from Bhutan and French Polynesia to Hawaii and Namibia, via Svalbard, Greenland and Saint Helena.
In 2016, he sailed and cycled from China to London in 133 days, for a Telegraph series and BBC World Service documentary. His award-winning TV travel series, Earth Cycle, has been distributed in 20+ countries globally and can be found on Amazon Prime, FOX Australia and YouTube.
His first book, Riding Out, (Summersdale, 2022) charts a 3,427 mile journey around “Pandemic Britain”, and his latest book, A Ride Across America (September, 2024) is a chronicle of his 4000-mile bike ride across the USA. Inspired by his frustration with the shallow media coverage focusing only on Trump, guns and divisions, he decided to travel slowly to try and better understand the country behind the headlines.
Moso Sematlane is a writer and filmmaker based in Maseru, Lesotho. He has previously been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize as well as the Gerald Kraak Award. He won the Stinging Fly’s FBA Fiction Prize in 2024 for his short story A Fern Between Rocks. He is currently working on his first short story collection.
John Patrick McHugh is from Galway. His work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Winter Papers, Banshee, The Tangerine, Tolka and Granta and been broadcast on BBC Radio3. He is the author of a collection of short stories, Pure Gold (4th Estate, 2021), and a novel, Fun and Games (4th Estate, 2025), which was shortlisted for Irish Book of the Year 2025, selected as an Observer Best Debut Novel, and chosen as a Book of the Year in The Irish Times, Vogue, The iPaper and the Observer.
Louis Hill is a writer and actor. As an actor, his credits include a wide variety of stage, screen and voiceover work. As a writer, he has written a number of plays and short films including his one-man show, Love & Tigers, which opened to sell out audiences and 5 star reviews for a limited run at the Hen and Chickens theatre. His short stories have been featured in a number of publications and have placed in several competitions. Let the Light in(DBF, 2025) is his debut novel.
Dean Browne is from County Tipperary and currently lives in Cork. He received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021. His chapbook Kitchens at Night was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition, and published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. His poems have appeared widely in journals such as the New York Review of Books, Banshee, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, PN Review, Stinging Fly, Winter Papers and elsewhere. After Party (Picador, 2025) is his first collection.
Laura Jean McKay is a writer based in Australia. She is the author of The Animals in That Country (Scribe 2020) – winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. The Animals in That Country has been shortlisted for The Kitschies, The Stella Prize, The Readings Prize and the ASL Gold Medal and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Laura is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc., 2013) and an Adjunct Lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University, New Zealand. She was awarded the New Zealand Society of Authors Waitangi Day Literary Honours in 2022. Her latest collection is Gunflower(Scribe 2023), named one of Readings Best Books of 2023.
Zakia Sewell is a writer, broadcaster and DJ from London. For the past eight years she has been producing and presenting radio documentaries and podcasts for platforms such as BBC Radio 3 and 4, Tate and Camden Arts Centre, on race, identity, music, mental health and culture, and was the recipient of the silver award for ‘Best New Voice’ at the Audio Production Awards in 2021.
Zakia has written articles for publications such as Tate Etc, Resident Advisor and Weird Walk, and recently contributed an essay to This Woman’s Work (White Rabbit Books, 2022), a collection of essays by and about women in music edited by Sinead Gleeson and Kim Gordon.
Alongside her documentary and writing work, Zakia is a big music fan and collector. She hosts BBC Radio 6 Music’s Dream Time and DJs regularly at clubs and festivals in London and abroad. She also regularly hosts workshops and panels and has worked on several creative research projects with arts institutions and heritage sites such as Chiswick House, The Black Cultural Archives, The Stuart Hall Library and the George Padmore Institute.
In 2020 Zakia developed, presented and co-produced a highly acclaimed four-part BBC Radio 4 series called ‘My Albion’ which explored ideas of Britishness, folk culture, Empire and identity. She is expanding on these themes in her first book Finding Albion, which will be published by Hodder.
Jenny Lau is the author of An A-Z of Chinese Food (Recipes Not Included) (Renegade, 2025), an exploration of food, language, identity and the Chinese diaspora, featured in Observer Food Monthly, The Sunday Times, AnOther and iPaper. She is the founder of Celestial Peach, a multidisciplinary platform established in 2018 to tell and connect stories of the Chinese diaspora through food, writing and community-led work. Through her events, writing and activism, Jenny has been featured by Gastro Obscura, It’s Nice That and Monocle. She has been listed three times as one of Code Hospitality’s 100 Most Influential Women in Hospitality.
Her food and culture writing has been published by Vittles and the South China Morning Post, and her chapter ‘The Community Centre’ appears in London Feeds Itself, the food writing anthology edited by Jonathan Nunn, alongside contributors including Claudia Roden, Ruby Tandoh and Jeremy Corbyn. Jenny has spoken at the British Library Food Season and the Edinburgh International Book Festival, lectured at SOAS, and taken part in panels and collaborations with the BFI, Southbank Centre, MilkTeaFilms and the Horniman Museum. She lives in London.
