Chris Wooding grew up in a small town in Leicestershire, where not much of anything happened. So he started to write novels. He was sixteen when he completed his first. He had an agent by eighteen. By nineteen he had signed his first book deal. When he left university he began to write full-time, and he has been doing it professionally all his adult life. Now thirty-nine, Chris has written over twenty books, which have been translated into twenty languages, won various awards and been published around the world. He writes for film and television, and has several projects in development. Chris has travelled extensively round the world, having backpacked all over Europe and North America, Scandinavia, South East Asia, Japan and South Africa. He also lived in Madrid for a time. When he wasn’t travelling on his own, he spent his twenties touring with bands and seeing the UK and Europe from the back of a van. He also learned not so long ago that his family tree can be traced back to John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, which has no bearing on him whatsoever but it’s kind of interesting anyway. Chris lives in London.

I'm Chris Krovatin, author of DARKNESS, RED ROVER, FREQUENCY, VENOMOUS, HEAVY METAL & YOU, the GRAVEDIGGERS trilogy, and HELLRAISERS). I'm also a journalist for multiple heavy metal press outfits, specifically The Pit, Kerrang!, Noisey, Invisible Oranges, and MetalSucks. I'm a horror enthusiast, Halloween worshipper, husband and dad living out in New Jersey. My favorite musicians are Slayer, Rob Zombie and Frank Sinatra, and my favorite food is gnocchi (it's made of potatoes!).

Markus Zusak is the author of five books, including the international bestseller, The Book Thief , which spent more than a decade on the New York Times bestseller list, and is translated into more than forty languages – establishing Zusak as one of the most successful authors to come out of Australia. To date, Zusak has held the number one position at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, the New York Times bestseller list, as well as in countries across South America, Europe and Asia. His books, The Underdog, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, When Dogs Cry (also titled Getting the Girl ), The Messenger (or I am the Messenger ) and The Book Thief have been awarded numerous honours ranging from literary prizes to readers choice awards to prizes voted on by booksellers. Zusak’s much-anticipated new novel, Bridge of Clay , is set for release in October 2018 in the USA, the UK and Australia, with foreign translations to follow.

Kevin Waltman was born in Bedford, Pennsylvania, and spent his teens and twenties in Indiana—time spent mostly around basketball courts and political events. He moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 2001 to get his MFA in fiction at The University of Alabama. There, he met his wife, Jessica Kidd. He now lives in Coker, Alabama, with Jessica, their daughter Calla, and their dog Henry. He teaches. He writes. He gardens. He cuts kudzu from their woods. He is the author of four y.a. novels. The first two are Nowhere Fast and Learning the Game. The two most recent—Next and Slump—are the first two parts of a four-part series from Cinco Puntos Press. The third in the series, Pull, will be out in late 2015. You can see more about Kevin, or find teaching guides to some of his work, at kevinwaltman.com..

TANUJA DESAI HIDIER is an award-winning author/singer-songwriter and innovator of the ‘booktrack’. She is the recipient of the 2015 South Asia Book Award, the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, the London Writers/Waterstones Award, and the APALA Children and YA Honor Award, and her short stories have been included in numerous anthologies. Her pioneering debut BORN CONFUSED—the first South Asian American YA novel—was named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and became a landmark work, hailed by Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone Magazine, and Paste Magazine as one of the greatest YA novels of all time on lists including such classics as To Kill A Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Little Women, Harry Potter, and Huckleberry Finn. The novel has been translated into various languages. Tanuja’s crossover/adult novel/sequel BOMBAY BLUES is recipient of the South Asia Book Award. It launched at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC, and the Zee/Jaipur Literature Festival in India (along with her accompanying album) and was deemed “a journey worth making” in a starred Kirkus review, “an immersive blend of introspection, external drama, and lyricism” by Publishers Weekly, “teeming with energy and music…a chronicle of Bombay cool” by The Hindustan Times, and “Chock-a-block with musical references as well as linguistic leaps of faith that only a musician could have pulled off” by The Sunday Guardian (cover story). WHEN WE WERE TWINS, Tanuja’ album of original songs based on Born Confused, was featured in Wired Magazine and at Creative Artists Agency for being the first-ever “booktrack.” The music video for ode-to-Bombay “HEPTANESIA”, from Tanuja’s Bombay Blues ‘booktrack’ album BOMBAY SPLEEN, was a BuzzPick on rotation at MTV Indies. Track “Seek Me In The Strange” was selected for the soundtrack of feature film Other People’s Children, and “Deep Blue She” for the #VogueEmpower playlist (Vogue India’s social awareness initiative for women). Tanuja recently produced the DEEP BLUE SHE #Mutiny2Unity #MeToo music video/remix/PSA: a grassroots women’s/LGBTQI/human rights and racial/gender equality project featuring 100+ artist/activists, with all artist proceeds to charity. Outlook Magazine calls the project “The ‘We Are The World’ of our times, with a desi edge.” More info on the participants and how to dive in (all artist proceeds to charity) here.

Kevin Brooks was born in 1959 and grew up in Exeter, Devon, England. He studied Psychology and Philosophy at Birmingham, Aston University in 1980 and Cultural Studies in London in 1983. Kevin Brooks has been in a variety of jobs including: musician, gasoline station attendant, crematorium handyman, civil service clerk, hot dog vendor at the London Zoo, post office clerk, and railway ticket office clerk. Kevin Brooks' writing career started with the publication of Martyn Pig in 2002 through The Chicken House which won the Branford Boase Award 2003 and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. He also wrote Lucas (2002) which was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and Booktrust Teenage Prize in 2003 also winning the North East Book Award in 2004. In 2004 he published Kissing the Rain and Bloodline and I See You, Baby and Candy in 2005. In 2006 he published 3 books including: Johnny Delgado Series - Like Father, Like Son and Private Detective as well as The Road of the Dead; a standalone novel. In February 2008 he published the standalone book Black Rabbit Summer. As a child, Kevin Brooks enjoyed reading detective novels. He writes most plots of the various books he has written around crime fiction. He likes mystery and suspence and enjoys putting both of those components into each and every story he writes in some shape or form.