Michel Faber
Michel Faber is an internationally bestselling and award-winning author of critically acclaimed novels, novellas and short stories, including The Crimson Petal and the White, The Book of Strange New Things, Under the Skin and the poetry collection, Undying: A Love Story.
Louisa Young
Louisa Young co-wrote the Lionboy series with her daughter and is the author of nine further books including, the bestselling My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, which was short-listed for the Costa Novel Award and Baby Love, long-listed for the Orange Prize.
Irenosen Okojie
Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language and ideas. Her novel, Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her latest novel, Curandera, was published in 2024. Her journalism has been featured in New York Times, Observer, Guardian and Huffington Post. She was a contributing editor for The White Review, and is a contributing editor at And Other Stories. She co-presented the BBC’s Turn Up for the Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Her work has been optioned for the screen. She has also judged various literary prizes, including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award. She was a judge for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Vice chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE ‘for services to literature’ in 2021. In 2023, she was named a visionary artist in Red magazine’s ‘The next 25 visionaries to watch’ list. She is the director and founder of Black to the Future festival, a multidisciplinary Afrofuturist festival.