Irenosen Okojue 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 journalism has been featured in The New York Times, the Observer, the Guardian and the Huffington Post. She was a Contributing Editor for The White Review. 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. She is the director and founder of Black to the Future festival.

Chris Bridges is an alumni of the London Writers Award. He previously wrote a weekly column for an LGBTQ+ lifestyle website and was a theatre reviewer. As a former NHS nurse with a hidden disability, he likes to feature the untold stories of sick, dying, and disabled people in his work and smash the trope of the passive disabled character. His debut novel ‘Sick to Death’ is out with Avon (Harper Collins) in February 2025.

Santanu Bhattacharya grew up in India, and studied at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. He is the winner of the 2023 Desmond Elliott Prize Residency and the 2021 Mo Siewcharran Prize. His first novel, One Small Voice, was an Observer best debut novel of 2023, and was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and the Society of Authors’ Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. He now lives in London.

Sara Jafari is a British-Iranian author and editor. She is the author of The Mismatch and People Change (Penguin Random House, 2021 and 2023), and the upcoming YA fantasy Heavensent & Hellbent (Delacorte, PRH US, Spring 2026).

Longlisted for Spread the Word's Life Writing Prize, her writing has also been published in gal-dem and The Good Journal, among other publications. She is also a contributor of the essay collection ""I Will Not Be Erased"": Our stories about growing up as people of colour (Walker Books, 2019), and Who’s Loving You (Trapeze, 2021).