David Almond is the author of Skellig, My Name is Mina, Island, Bone Music and many other novels, stories, picture books, opera librettos, songs and plays. His work is translated into 40 languages, and is widely adapted for stage and screen. His major awards include the Carnegie Medal, two Whitbread Awards, the Eleanor Farjeon Award, the Michael L Printz Award (USA), Le Prix Sorcières (France), the Nonino International Prize, the James Kruss Prize and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. He has also won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the world's most prestigious prize for children's authors. In 2021, David was awarded an OBE for services to literature. David speaks at festivals and conferences around the world. He is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. He is widely regarded as one of the most exciting, inspirational and innovative children's authors writing today.

He has one amazing daughter. He lives in Newcastle, the city in which he was born. www.davidalmond.com Tom de Freston has worked as an acclaimed artist for many years, and made his illustrative debut with his collaboration with Kiran Millwood Hargrave on Julia and the Shark . He constructs multimedia worlds, combining paintings, film and performance into immersive visceral narratives. He lives in Oxford, in a house between a river and a forest.