Kate Griffin is the name under which Catherine Webb writes fantasy books for adults. First published when a teenager, she's been writing for just long enough to have started to forget her early plots and characters. She likes big cities, urban magic, Thai food and graffiti-spotting, and is endlessly fascinated by such questions as who leaves copies of the yellow pages on top of bus shelters, how the hidden tunnels beneath the sorting office were built, and why anyone would ever dispose of perfectly good pairs of shoes by throwing them over the nearest telephone line.
To keep herself occupied between chapters, she works as a theatre lighting designer, in the happy expectation that two artsy careers create a perfectly balanced life.
Nick Harkaway was born in the print room of the Toxley Heath Advertiser, son of an itinerant typesetter and the editor of the swimwear section. His earliest plaything was a kerning knife. He has had a varied career, including time as a receptionist at a medical cult offering human cloning and a dubious stint wearing a rabbit costume and being pulled from a hat during the finale of a burlesque show. His second novel, Angelmaker, won the Red Tentacle 2012, and his third is made entirely out of actual tigers. He enjoys Italian red wine, Argentine tango and the company of intelligent people, and lives with his family in a sub-marine house off the coast of Crete.
Will Hill is the author of the bestselling YA series Department 19 and one of the judges of the Guardian Hot Key Books Young Writers Prize. Before giving up a career in publishing to write full time, he worked as a bartender, a bookseller and a door-to-door charity worker. Will grew up in the north-east of England, is scared of spiders, and lives in east London with his girlfriend.
Anab Jain was born and educated in India, and received an MA in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art. She founded Superflux in 2009, leading the Consultancy's client partnerships whilst balancing the Lab's self-initiated conceptual projects. She has lead multidisciplinary design, strategy and foresight projects for businesses, think-tanks and research organisations such as Sony, BBC, Nokia, NHS, Design Council, Forum for the Future, Qatar Foundation and Govt. of UAE.
Honoured as a TED Fellow, she is the recipient of several awards, including the Award of Excellence ICSID and Apply Computers, Innovation Award, Chicago International Film Festival and the UNESCO Digital Arts Award. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA New York, Apple Computers Inc, Mattel Toys, Tate Modern, Science Gallery Dublin, National Museum of China and the London Design Festival.
Annabel Wright began her editorial career in Tokyo as a journalist and reviewer for Japan's largest newspaper. On moving to London, she joined the literary division of HarperCollins Publishers, where she spent nearly a decade editing bestselling and prize-winning fiction and non-fiction authors. She left her role as Senior Editor in 2012 to co-found a publishing services company, whitefox, which aims to offer a new, more flexible model for authors and publishers, reflecting the changing publishing landscape.
