Ardashir "Ardu" Vakil is an Indian-born British author whose first novel, Beach Boy , won the Betty Trask Award in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. [1] His second novel, One Day was shortlisted for the Encore Award.
Born in 1962 in Bombay and educated at The Doon School, [2] and University of Cambridge, [3] he has lived in London since 1997 with his wife and two children. [4] He teaches Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. [1]
Ian Russell McEwan is a British novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, The Times featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 19 in its list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".
Vikram Seth is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Akademi Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award. Seth's collections of poetry such as Mappings and Beastly Tales are notable contributions to the Indian English language poetry canon.
Helen Dunmore FRSL was a British poet, novelist, and short story and children's writer.
Kamila Shamsie FRSL is a Pakistani and British writer and novelist who is best known for her award-winning novel Home Fire (2017). Named on Granta magazine's list of 20 best young British writers, Shamsie has been described by The New Indian Express as "a novelist to reckon with and to look forward to." She also writes for publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, Index on Censorship and Prospect, and broadcasts on radio.
Anita Desai is an Indian novelist and Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Literature. She won the Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London. Since 2020 she has been a Companion of Literature.
Mahasweta Devi was an Indian writer in Bengali and an activist. Her notable literary works include Hajar Churashir Maa, Rudali, and Aranyer Adhikar. She was a leftist who worked for the rights and empowerment of the tribal people of West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states of India. She was honoured with various literary awards such as the Sahitya Akademi Award, Jnanpith Award and Ramon Magsaysay Award along with India's civilian awards Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan.
Philip Ridley is an English storyteller working in a wide range of genres and artistic media.
Sir Michael Andrew Bridge Morpurgo is an English book author, poet, playwright, and librettist who is known best for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). His work is noted for its "magical storytelling", for recurring themes such as the triumph of an outsider or survival, for characters' relationships with nature, and for vivid settings such as the Cornish coast or the trenches of the First World War. Morpurgo was the third Children's Laureate, from 2003 to 2005, and is President of BookTrust, a children's reading charity.
Roger Jon Ellory is an English thriller writer.
Anne Simpson is a Canadian poet, novelist, artist and essayist. She was a recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize.
Lavinia Elaine Greenlaw is an English poet, novelist and non-fiction writer. She won the Prix du Premier Roman with her first novel and her poetry has been shortlisted for awards that include the T. S. Eliot Prize, Forward Prize and Whitbread Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Poetry Award for A Double Sorrow: A Version of Troilus and Criseyde. Greenlaw currently holds the post of Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Beach Boy (1997) is the debut novel of Indian novelist Ardashir Vakil. It is a coming-of-age story (bildungsroman) set in 1970s Bombay. The novel won the Betty Trask Award and was nominated for the Whitbread Prize. It was first published by Penguin Books.
Ann Cleeves is a British mystery crime writer. She wrote the Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez, and Matthew Venn series, all three of which have been adapted into TV shows. In 2006 she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for her novel Raven Black, the first novel in the Jimmy Perez series.
Irwin Allan Sealy is an Indian writer. His novel The Everest Hotel: A Calendar was shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize.
Marguerite Poland is a South African writer and author of eleven children's books.
Jeet Thayil is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is the author of several poetry collections, including These Errors Are Correct (2008), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award. His first novel, Narcopolis, (2012), won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and The Hindu Literary Prize.
Sathnam Sanghera FRSL is a British journalist and best-selling author.
Stephen Kelman is an English novelist, who grew up on Marsh Farm council estate in Luton. He studied marketing at the University of Bedfordshire, then worked variously as a warehouse operative, as a caseworker, and in marketing and local government administration.
Louisa Young is a British novelist, songwriter, short-story writer, biographer and journalist, whose work has appeared in 32 languages. By 2023 she had published seven novels under her own name and five with her daughter, the actor Isabel Adomakoh Young, under the pen name Zizou Corder. Her eleventh novel, Devotion, appeared in June 2016. She has also written three non-fiction books, The Book of the Heart, A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott and her memoir, You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol, an account of her relationship with the composer Robert Lockhart and of his alcoholism. Her most recent novel, Twelve Months and a Day, was published in June 2022 in the UK, and in the US in January 2023 (Putnam). She is currently working on three new volumes of The Cazalet Chronicles, by Elizabeth Jane Howard. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.