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Jeff Osment is a retired filmmaker, who has made over 300 films and videos for industry and businesses over a 40 year career, starting as a projectionist in a London advertising agency in 1972 and finishing as the creator and producer of Lush TV from 2006 until 2014.

He has travelled all over the world on filming assignments and won international awards for his work. In 2015, he took early retirement and started writing. A keen sailor, he is the current editor of The Shrimper magazine.

Kate O’Shaughnessy is the award-winning author of middle grade novels THE WRONG WAY HOME, LASAGNA MEANS I LOVE YOU, and THE LONELY HEART OF MAYBELLE LANE, and the forthcoming BRITTLE MAGIC (Knopf). Her books have won numerous distinctions and awards, including a Newbery Honor, the Northern California Book Award, and the Vermont State Book Award. Her work has been nominated for over thirty state award reading lists and recognized on best-of lists by places and publications such as the New York Public Library, Bank Street College of Education, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews. When she’s not writing, Kate can be found attempting to grow vegetables in her container garden, hiking in the woods with her dog, and chronically mispronouncing words. She lives in California with her family.

Janice Okoh is a British-Nigerian, multi-award-winning playwright and screenwriter. She has had over 17 original plays and adaptations produced. Her first play, Egusi Soup, won a Channel 4 Playwriting Award in 2017 and Three Birds won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2011. Three Birds was adapted into a six-part TV comedy drama, Just Act Normal, which aired on BBC Three in 2025, to critical acclaim. An early draft of Girl Number Eight was shortlisted for the 2023 Bath Novel Awards and was awarded a Mary Prince Memorial Award from the Black Writers’ Guild in the same year.

Originally from Sweden, Emelie Olsson lives in the UK with her husband and children. Following a career for Puzzler magazines, making crosswords and other puzzle content, she set up a company with her sister providing empowerment and skills training to women. This led to work supporting women escaping domestic abuse. Emelie has travelled extensively, including a lengthy trip around Mexico which inspired the setting of her debut novel.

M. K. Oliver is a former teacher and headteacher originally from Liverpool. He long dreamed of becoming a writer and after many years of working in schools took the exciting decision to put down his whiteboard marker to take up the keyboard and give it a go.

He enjoyed writing courses at Curtis Brown, Faber & Faber, and the Royal Court Theatre and now lives with his family and a talkative cat in North London, which provides the inspiration for the location but thankfully not the characters of this story. Intrigued by the lengths to which people will go to ensure their own success, M. K. Oliver created his protagonist, the uncompromising Lalla Rook.

James Olstein is an illustrator living in Philadelphia. He has illustrated for the BBC, Bob’s Burgers, Monocle Magazine, Mental Floss, Scientific America, Sierra Magazine, economia, the Boston Globe and the National Constitution Centre. He has displayed his work at Spoke Gallery NYC, Galleries 1988 and Philadelphia Independents.

He runs a successful blog called Illustrated Science, that has been featured in The Verge and Geekadelphia.