DAVID LEVITHAN is the New York Times best-selling author of many novels including Every Day, Another Day, Two Boys Kissing, The Lover’s Dictionary, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn), and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green). He won the Lambda Literary Award for his debut novel Boy Meets Boy. He works as a publisher and editor by day. He lives in New Jersey.

PRIYANKA MEENAKSHI is a self-taught writer and artist living in Bristol. She writes and illustrates for a variety of different publications, on themes of trauma and recovery. You can see more of her work at priyankameenakshi.com

ALICE OSEMAN is a writer and illustrator. Her first novel, Solitaire, was published when she was nineteen. Her second, Radio Silence, was published in 2016 and her third, I Was Born for This, in May 2018. Her webcomic, Heartstopper, follows the relationship of two characters from Solitaire.

MICHAEL LEE RICHARDSON is a writer and youth worker from Glasgow. As a screenwriter he has written comedy for CBBC and BBC Alba. His original work has been shortlisted for BBC Scotland’s Frank Deasy Award and the BAFTA Rocliffe Comedy Award, and his young adult comedy ‘Real Life Experience’ was ‘highly commended’ for BBC Writersroom’s Trans Comedy Award. In 2015 he won the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in the Children and Young Adult category. As a youth worker, he set up and ran Trans Youth Glasgow, part of LGBT Youth Scotland. He currently works for LEAP Sports Scotland on Trans Team, a project aimed at encouraging transgender young people to engage with sport and outdoor activities. www.hrfmichael.co.uk

DAVID ROBERTS is one of the UK’s foremost children’s illustrators and has been shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for Little Red, The Dunderheads and Tinder. David won a Gold Award in the Nestlé Children’s Book Prize for Mouse Noses On Toast in 2006. He has worked with acclaimed writers including Julia Donaldson, Sally Gardner and Julian Clary. David lives in Kennington, South London.

CYNTHIA SO was born in Hong Kong and lives in London. She graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA in Classics in 2016 and has been working in higher education since then. She writes YA, speculative fiction and poetry. Her work can be found in magazines such as Uncanny, Anathema and Arsenika.

KAY STAPLES is a writer from the Midlands. After studying creative writing at the University of Birmingham, Kay now works in marketing as a content writer in London, and listens to an awful lot of alternative music.