Carol Ann Shields was an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada.
Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. She was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction.
David Bergen is a Canadian novelist. He has published eleven novels and two collections of short stories since 1993 and is currently based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and he was a finalist again in 2010 and 2020, making the long list in 2008.
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.
Carol Townend is a writer of historical romances for Harlequin Mills & Boon. Her novels are generally set in Medieval England and Europe. Her first novel won the Romantic Novelists' Association New Writer's Award. She has also published a number of articles with Writing Magazine and Writers' News.
Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South African novelist and short-story writer. She was the 2008 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing for her speculative-fiction story "Poison". Her novel Nineveh was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Prize for Fiction and the M-Net Literary Awards. In September of that year her story "Sanctuary" was awarded second place in the 2012 BBC (Inter)national Short Story Award.
Janet Gover is an Australian writer of over a dozen romance novels and more than 20 short stories since 2002. Her work has won numerous awards in the UK and the US, including the Romantic Novelists' Association's Epic Romantic Novel of the Year (2017) and Elizabeth Goudge Trophy (2007).
Maria Joan Hyland is an ex-lawyer and the author of three novels: How the Light Gets In (2004), Carry Me Down (2006) and This is How (2009). Hyland is a lecturer in creative writing in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. Carry Me Down (2006) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Hawthornden Prize and the Encore Prize.
Suzette Mayr is a Canadian novelist who has written five critically acclaimed novels. Currently a professor at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Arts, Mayr's works have both won and been nominated for several literary awards.
The Romantic Novel of the Year Award is an award for romance novels since 1960, presented by Romantic Novelists' Association, and since 2003, the novellas, also won the Love Story of the Year.
Matt Dunn is a British romantic comedy novelist. He was educated at Chatham House Grammar School in Ramsgate, and then read Sports Science at Brighton Polytechnic.
Milly Johnson is a British author of romantic fiction. She has written 21 best-selling novels with over three million sales worldwide, one book of poetry, and 5 novellas. She was nominated for the Melissa Nathan Award for Romantic comedy in 2012, winner of the RoNA Award for Comedy Romance in 2014 and 2016 and Winner of Channel 4's Come Dine With Me – Barnsley edition. She was honoured with the Romantic Novelist Association's Outstanding Achievement Award in 2020. She is also an after-dinner speaker, poet, professional joke writer, short-story writer and newspaper columnist.
Kirstin Valdez Quade is an American writer.
Sophia Bennett is a British crime novelist and children's writer. She was first published at the age of 42, and her novels have been published in more than 20 languages.
Elizabeth Heery is a British actress, screenwriter and novelist. As an actress and author she works under the name Elizabeth Morton and Eliza Morton. She played Madeline Bassett in ITV series Jeeves and Wooster. Since 2016, she has been an ambassador for the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. She trained at the Guildhall School of Drama and The Royal Court Young Writers Group.
Kate Johnson, also known as Cat Marsters, is a British author who writes in the Paranormal and Speculative Romantic Novel genres. She is the author of the award-winning novel Max Seventeen.
Rebecca K Reilly is a New Zealand author. Her debut novel Greta & Valdin (2021) was a bestseller in New Zealand and received critical acclaim. It received the 2019 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing and the Hubert Church prize for the best first book of fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Fawn Parker is a Canadian writer, whose novel What We Both Know was longlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize. Parker's essay "The Prescription" appeared in Maisonneuve Magazine and was a finalist for the 2023 National Magazine Awards. In 2020, her short story "FEED MACHINE" was nominated for the Writers' Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Her poem "Woof" has been shortlisted for a 2024 National Magazine Award.
Liz Fenwick is an American writer of commercial fiction, living in Cornwall, England. She has published nine novels and two novellas taking her inspiration from Cornwall's history and landscape, and in 2017 was named "the queen of the contemporary Cornish novel" by The Guardian.
