Frank Morrison Spillane, better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist, called the "king of pulp fiction". His stories often feature his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. Spillane was also an occasional actor, once even playing Hammer himself in the 1965 film The Girl Hunters.
Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a portal fantasy novel for children by C. S. Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1950. It is the first published and best known of seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956). Among all the author's books, it is also the most widely held in libraries. It was the first of The Chronicles of Narnia to be written and published, but is marked as volume two in recent editions that are sequenced according the stories' internal chronology. Like the other Chronicles, it was illustrated by Pauline Baynes, and her work has been retained in many later editions.
Brian David Sibley is an English writer. He is author of over 100 hours of radio drama and has written and presented hundreds of radio documentaries, features and weekly programmes. Among his adaptations is the 1981 version of The Lord of the Rings for radio. A columnist and author, he is widely known as the author of many film "making of" books, including those for the Harry Potter series, and The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
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."
Sir Simon Michael Schama is an English historian and television presenter. He specialises in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.
Sir Ian James Rankin is a Scottish crime writer and philanthropist, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of thirteen children's novels written by American author Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket. The books follow the turbulent lives of orphaned siblings Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire. After their parents' death in a fire, the children are placed in the custody of a murderous villain, Count Olaf, who attempts to steal their inheritance and causes numerous disasters with the help of his accomplices as the children attempt to flee. As the plot progresses, the Baudelaires gradually confront further mysteries surrounding their family and deep conspiracies involving a secret society, which also involves Olaf and Snicket, the author's own fictional self-insert.
David Quantick is an English novelist, comedy writer and critic, who has worked as a journalist and screenwriter. A former freelance writer for the music magazine NME, his writing credits have included On the Hour, Blue Jam and TV Burp. He won an Emmy Award for Veep in 2015.
Ian McMillan is an English poet, journalist, playwright, and broadcaster. He is known for his strong and distinctive Yorkshire accent and his incisive, friendly interview style on programmes such as BBC Radio 3's The Verb. He lives in Darfield, the village of his birth.
Lisa Appignanesi is a Polish-born British-Canadian writer, novelist, and campaigner for free expression. Until 2021, she was the Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a former President of English PEN and Chair of the Freud Museum London. She chaired the 2017 Booker International Prize won by Olga Tokarczuk.
Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi is a Malaysian writer living in London.
Tishani Doshi FRSL is an Indian poet, journalist and dancer based in Chennai. In 2006 she won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection due to Countries of the Body. Her poetry book A God at the Door was later shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.
Kenneth Martin Edwards is a British crime novelist, whose work has won multiple awards including lifetime achievement awards for his fiction, non-fiction, short fiction, and scholarship in the UK and the United States. In addition to translations into various European languages, his books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. As a crime fiction critic and historian, and also in his career as a solicitor, he has written non-fiction books and many articles. He is the current President of the Detection Club and in 2020 was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing, in recognition of the "sustained excellence" of his work in the genre.
Michael Angus Phillips, is a British writer and broadcast journalist of Guyanese descent. He is best known for his crime fiction, including four novels featuring black journalist Sam Dean.
Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
The Warwick Prize for Writing was an international literary prize, worth £25,000, that was given biennially for writing excellence in the English language, in any genre or form, on a theme that changes with every award. It was launched by the University of Warwick in July 2008. Past nominations included scientific research, novels, poems, e-books and plays. Works were open to be nominated by staff, students and alumni of Warwick University, and since 2014, the publishing industry.
David Macinnis Gill is an American author who writes for young adults.
Anton Gill is a British writer of historical fiction and nonfiction. He won the H. H. Wingate Award for non-fiction for The Journey Back From Hell, an account of the lives of survivors after their liberation from Nazi concentration camps.
Syd Moore is a British bestselling novelist, former television presenter and activist. Her debut novel, The Drowning Pool, was published in 2011 by HarperCollins. Her novels are mystery thrillers inspired by her research into the myths from the English county of Essex, where she grew up and still lives.
