Sir Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and praised contemporary fiction authors writing in English, having been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy described Ishiguro as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".
Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story's supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated: "In its blend of memoirs and photojournalism, and in its championing of contemporary realist fiction, Granta has its face pressed firmly against the window, determined to witness the world."
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
Ben Marcus is an American author and professor at Columbia University. He has written four books of fiction. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications including Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, The New York Times, GQ, Salon, McSweeney's, Time, and Conjunctions. He is also the fiction editor of The American Reader. His latest book, Notes From The Fog: Stories, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in August 2018.
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.
Adam Thirlwell is a British novelist. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He has twice been named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. In 2015 he received the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an advisory editor of The Paris Review.
Alan James Hollinghurst is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 2004 Booker Prize.
Adam Nicolson, is an English author who has written about history, landscape, great literature and the sea. He is also the 5th Baron Carnock, but does not use the title.
Philip Blake Morrison FRSL is an English poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. He has also written a study of the murder of James Bulger, As If. Since 2003, Morrison has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Peter Ho Davies, is a contemporary British writer of Welsh and Chinese descent.
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet, translator, and critic. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English".
Romesh Gunesekera FRSL is a Sri Lankan-born British author, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel Reef in 1994. He has judged a number of literary prizes and was Chair of the judges of Commonwealth Short Story Prize competition for 2015.
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Philip Michael Hensher FRSL is an English novelist, critic and journalist.
Nadeem Aslam FRSL is a British Pakistani novelist. His debut novel, Season of the Rainbirds, won the Betty Trask and the Author's Club First Novel Award. His critically acclaimed second novel Maps for Lost Lovers won Encore Award and Kiriyama Prize; it was shortlisted for International Dublin Literary Award, among others. Colm Tóibín described him as "one of the most exciting and serious British novelists writing now".
Opal Dream is a 2006 Australian drama film, based on the 2000 Ben Rice novella Pobby and Dingan, directed by Peter Cattaneo and starring an ensemble cast including Vince Colosimo, Jacqueline McKenzie, Christian Byers and Sapphire Boyce. It was filmed on location around South Australia, in Adelaide, Coober Pedy and Woomera. Opal Dream was released in Australia on 28 September 2006, with eventual release around the world.
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
John Siddique is a spiritual teacher, poet, and author.
Nadifa Mohamed is a Somali-British novelist. She featured on Granta magazine's list "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2013, and in 2014 on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Her 2021 novel, The Fortune Men, was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, making her the first British Somali novelist to get this honour. She has also written short stories, essays, memoirs and articles in outlets including The Guardian, and contributed poetry to the anthology New Daughters of Africa. Mohamed was also a lecturer in Creative Writing in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London until 2021. She will be Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University in Spring 2022.
Pobby and Dingan is a novella by English author Ben Rice, which first appeared in issue 70 of Granta in Summer 2000 and published in book form later that year. It was joint winner of the 2001 Somerset Maugham Award and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It has been made into the 2006 film Opal Dream, a 2010 play for children by Catherine Wheels Theatre Company and a 2012 play The Mysterious Vanishment Of Pobby & Dingan for Bristol theatre company Travelling Light.
