Chris made his advertising debut in 1993 as a copywriter at Arnold Worldwide, a high profile ad agency in Boston. There he used what he learned working in advertising along with his ever-present sense of humor to rebrand himself and orchestrate what was quite possibly the most widely accepted and embraced gender transition of its kind–at a time when the word “transgender” didn’t exist. He eventually became more known for his creative talent than his transition. He was the first to use YouTube content in a TV spot with two guys rapping about McNuggets and is responsible for the earworm, Gimme back that Filet-O-Fish, gimme that fiiiiish. He was also part of the creative team on Truth, which was recently ranked one of the Top 15 Ad Campaigns of the 21st Century. After building an award-winning career spanning nearly twenty years, Chris left his Arnold post as EVP, Group Creative Director to write his memoir, BALLS. Since then he’s become a sought-after speaker, inspiring audiences with his courageous story and compelling message that we actually have the power to control how others define us.

Betsy Whyte was born into a traveller family in 1919 and brought up in the age-old tradition of the ‘mist people’ – constantly moving around the country and settling down in one place only during the winter. It was while the family were ‘housed up’ at this time of year that she received her education, attending a number of village schools before winning a scholarship to Brechin High school, where she was the only traveller child. She gave up the traveller life when she married in 1939 and started writing about her childhood in the 1970s. In 1988 she suffered a fatal heart attack during the weekend of a traditional ceilidh.

Duncan James Williamson was a Scottish storyteller and singer, and a member of the Scottish Traveller community. The Scottish poet and scholar Hamish Henderson once referred to him as "possibly the most extraordinary tradition-bearer of the whole Traveller tribe." Williamson is reputed to have been born in a bow-tent on the banks of Loch Fyne, near the village of Furnace in Argyll, to Jock Williamson and Betsy Townsley, and was one of 16 children. He learned his repertoire of stories and songs from family, and other members of the Traveller community. His illiterate father was a basketmaker & tinsmith, and insisted that his children get an education, sending Williamson to school in Furnace. Like other Scottish travellers, the Williamson family lived in a fairly large tent during the winter months and took to the roads for the summer, walking from camping place to camping place and picking up seasonal work as they went. At age fourteen, he was apprenticed to a stonemason and dry stane-dyker. A year later, he left home with an older brother, travelling all over Argyll and Perthshire. He worked as a farm labourer, and later as a horse dealer. He was married to his first wife, Jeannie Townley (a distant cousin) in 1949 and had seven children together. Jeannie died in 1971. On 22 February 1977, Williamson married the American-born musicologist/folklorist Linda Headlee, with whom he had two children. For the first four years of their marriage they lived in a tent, following which they lived in a cottage in Fife. It was largely through her that Duncan came into demand as a storyteller in Scottish schools, as well a featured performer at storytelling festivals both in the UK and abroad. Williamson's life on the road in his teens and as a young married man is recounted in his oral autobiography, The Horsieman: Memories of a Traveller 1928-1958. From early on he developed a zest for storytelling as well as a love for the conviviality that attends "having a crack" (trading talk with friends or companions). His repertory of songs and stories continued to expand throughout his life, particularly after he gained entry to the world inhabited by folklorists by taking part in Scotland's folksong and storytelling revivals during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In 1967 Williamson met the travellers' rights activist Helen Fullerton, a collector of traditional folktales, who had previously recorded his mother and siblings in 1958. Fullerton told another collector, Geordie MacIntyre, about Williamson, with MacIntryre making further recordings, also in 1967. In 1968, Williamson performed at the Blairgowrie Folk Festival. Thanks chiefly to Linda's skill in editing his tape-recorded performances, a number of Duncan's stories came into print during his lifetime. A few audio recordings of his songs and stories have been issued commercially as well. Many more recordings remain in storage in personal or public archives, including the Sound Archive of the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh and the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. Williamson's talents as a storyteller are celebrated in several books written by specialists in Scottish tradition and the art of oral narrative.

D.A. Watson is the author of four novels and the fiction and poetry collection Tales of the What the Fuck. His stories, verse and articles have appeared in several anthologies and collections and have won gongs and acclaim from Greenock to Dunedin, including nominations for a Pushcart Prize in the US and the UK People's Book Prize. An occasional poetry performer, he also appeared on the main stage of the Burnsfest Festival in 2018 as the warm up act for the one and only Chesney Hawkes, a personal milestone and career highlight. He lives with his family on the west coast of Scotland and is still telling stories.

My debut novel, The Dark Between the Trees, is part historical thriller, part slow-burn horror (with a dash of science fiction if you squint), and was published by Solaris Books in 2022. I’m currently working on my second book. The rest of the time, I’m a proofreader and copy-editor with eight years of experience. The work I have edited and proofread has ranged from academic articles and PhD theses to technical documents to company terms and conditions, from psychology to geology, social policy to astrophysics, and modern art to evolutionary biology.

Ricky Monahan Brown suffered a massive haemorrhagic stroke in 2012. Doctors gave him a one-in-twenty chance of a good outcome, where a 'good outcome' would be surviving in a non-vegetative, non-plegic state. The resulting survival memoir, Stroke: A 5% chance of survival, became one of The Scotsman’s Scottish Nonfiction Books of 2019. Ricky’s short fiction has been widely published, including in 404 Ink literary magazine and most recently by Lemon Peel Press and Soor Ploom Press. Little Apples will be published in 2022 as part of Leamington Books’ Novella Express series. The live literature and music series he co-founded, Interrobang?! won the Saboteur Award for the Best Regular Spoken Word Night in Britain for 2017. A stroke awareness ambassador for the British Heart Foundation, Ricky lives in Edinburgh with his wife and their son.

Kirsty Logan is a professional daydreamer. She is the author of two novels, The Gloaming and The Gracekeepers, and two story collections, A Portable Shelter and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales. Her fifth book, Things We Say in the Dark, will be published on Halloween 2019. Kirsty lives in Glasgow with her wife and their rescue dog. She has tattooed toes.