Deborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, highly acclaimed for their "intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination", including PAX, HERESIES for the Royal Shakespeare Company, CLAM, CALL BLUE JANE, SHINY NYLON, HONEY BABY MIDDLE ENGLAND, PUSHING THE PRINCE INTO DENMARK and MACBETH-FALSE MEMORIES, some of which are published in LEVY: PLAYS 1 (Methuen) Deborah wrote and published her first novel BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS (Vintage), when she was 27 years old. The experience of not having to give her words to a director, actors and designer to interpret, was so exhilarating, she wrote a few more. These include, SWALLOWING GEOGRAPHY, THE UNLOVED (Vintage) and BILLY and GIRL (Bloomsbury). She has always written across a number of art forms (see Bookworks and Collaborations with visual artists) and was Fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989-1991.

Nació en Elche (Alicante), en 1946. Estudió Derecho y Filosofía y Letras en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Posteriormente se trasladó a Londres, dónde vivió ocho años, para obtener el graduado en Historia del Arte por la Universidad de Londres. Durante tres años ejerció como profesor de literatura española en Oxford. A su regreso a España, impartió clases de Filosofía del Arte en la Universidad del País Vasco. Fue uno de los seleccionados por el editor y crítico catalán José María Castellet, en 1970, para la obra "Nueve novísimos poetas españoles”. Ha recibido los premios Barral, Azorín, Herralde y en el 2007 el Premio Nacional de Literatura Narrativa. A partir de 1985 empezó a colaborar con el periódico "El País". Para la revista "Fotogramas" escribe críticas sobre cine y televisión. Debutó en la dirección cinematográfica, con el largometraje "Sagitario" (2001), protagonizada por Ángela Molina y Eusebio Poncela. Su segunda película, “El dios de madera”, se estrenó en el verano de 2010. Sus principales publicaciones narrativas son: Museo provincial de los horrores, Busto (Premio Barral 1973), La comunión de los atletas, Los padres viudos (Premio Azorín 1983), La Quincena Soviética (Premio Herralde 1988), La misa de Baroja, La mujer si cabezas y El vampiro de la calle Méjico (Premio Alfonso García Ramos 2002).

Hisham Matar was born in New York City, where his father was working for the Libyan delegation to the United Nations. When he was three years old, his family went back to Tripoli, Libya, where he spent his early childhood. Due to political persecutions by the Ghaddafi regime, in 1979 his father was accused of being a reactionary to the Libyan revolutionary regime and was forced to flee the country with his family. They lived in exile in Egypt where Hisham and his brother completed their schooling in Cairo. In 1986 he moved to London, United Kingdom, where he continued his studies and received a degree in architecture. In 1990, while he was still in London, his father, a political dissident, was kidnapped in Cairo. He has been reported missing ever since. However, in 1996, the family received two letters with his father's handwriting stating that he was kidnapped by the Egyptian secret police, handed over to the Libyan regime, and imprisoned in the notorious Abu-Salim prison in the heart of Tripoli. Since that date, there has been no more information about his father's whereabouts. Hisham Matar began writing poetry and experimented in theatre. He began writing his first novel In the Country of Men in early 2000. In the autumn of 2005, the publishers Penguin International signed a two-book deal with him, and the novel was a huge success.

Poet and novelist Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father. He grew up in London before returning to Nigeria with his family in 1968. Much of his early fiction explores the political violence that he witnessed at first hand during the civil war in Nigeria. He left the country when a grant from the Nigerian government enabled him to read Comparative Literature at Essex University in England. He was poetry editor for West Africa magazine between 1983 and 1986 and broadcast regularly for the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985. He was appointed Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge in 1991, a post he held until 1993. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1987, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Westminster (1997) and Essex (2002). His first two novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), are both set in Nigeria and feature as central characters two young men struggling to make sense of the disintegration and chaos happening in both their family and country. The two collections of stories that followed, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), are set in Lagos and London. In 1991 Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road (1991). Set in a Nigerian village, this is the first in a trilogy of novels which tell the story of Azaro, a spirit child. Azaro's narrative is continued in Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). Other recent fiction includes Astonishing the Gods (1995) and Dangerous Love (1996), which was awarded the Premio Palmi (Italy) in 2000. His latest novels are In Arcadia (2002) and Starbook (2007). A collection of poems, An African Elegy, was published in 1992, and an epic poem, Mental Flight, in 1999. A collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, was published in 1997. Ben Okri is also the author of a play, In Exilus. In his latest book, Tales of Freedom (2009), Okri brings together poetry and story. Ben Okri is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN, a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, and was awarded an OBE in 2001. He lives in London.

Rhidian Brook (born 1964) is a novelist, screenwriter and broadcaster. His first novel, The Testimony Of Taliesin Jones (Harper Collins) won three prizes, including the 1997 Somerset Maugham Award, and was made into a film starring Jonathan Pryce. His second novel, Jesus And The Adman (Harper Collins) was published in 1999. His third novel, The Aftermath, was published in April 2013 by Penguin UK, Knopf US and a further 18 publishers around the world. His short stories have been published by The Paris Review, Punch, The New Statesman, Time Out and others; and several were broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Short Story. His first commission for television - Mr Harvey Lights A Candle - was broadcast in 2005 on BBC1 and starred Timothy Spall. He wrote for the BBC series Silent Witness between 2005-7, and the factual drama Atlantis for BBC1 in 2008. Africa United, his first feature film (Pathe), went on general release in the UK in October 2010. He is adapting The Aftermath as a feature for Scott Free and BBC Film. He has written articles for papers, including The Observer, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. In 2005, he presented Nailing The Cross, a documentary for BBC1. In 2006 he broadcast a series In The Blood for BBC World Service, recording his family’s journey through the AIDS pandemic. His book about that journey - More Than Eyes Can See - was published by Marion Boyars in 2007. He has been a regular contributor to Radio 4’s "Thought For The Day" for more than twelve years. He lives with his wife and two children in London.

Nell Leyshon is a British playwright and novelist born in Glastonbury, Somerset. At the age of eleven, she moved to a small farming village on the edge of the Somerset Levels. Her first attempts at novels were with a baby on her lap. She burned a lot of the early writing, and finally started on Black Dirt, which was her first published novel. While struggling to write prose, she got a commission from BBC Radio 4 to write a radio drama, "Milk", which won the Richard Imison Award for best first radio play. Her second play, The Farm, was runner up for the Meyer Whitworth Award. Her novel, Black Dirt was published in 2005 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and runner up for the Commonwealth Prize. Her third novel, The Colour of Milk, was published in May 2012 and has won the Prix de l’Union Interalliee and was nominated for the Prix Femina in France and was was voted the book of the year in Spain. Her most recent novel, "Memoirs of a Dipper" was published in 2015.