Brigid Brophy (1929-1995) was a British novelist, critic and political campaigner, championing causes as diverse as feminism, homosexual equality, pacifism, prison reform, humanism and vegetarianism (her 1965 Sunday Times manifesto, 'The Rights of Animals', kick-started the movement). She also co-founded the Writers' Action Group, which campaigned for Public Lending Right. A public intellectual and left-wing activist in the 1960s, Brophy was a byword for controversy: 'Britain's foremost literary shrew'. Openly bisexual, she was expelled from Oxford for 'indiscretions' and began an open marriage with Michael Levey, director of the National Gallery, in 1954, encompassing relationships with Iris Murdoch and Maureen Duffy. She wrote seven celebrated novels as well as non-fiction on Mozart, Beardsley and Firbank. Brophy was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1983 and died in 1995. Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Practice at the University of Cumbria.

Twice nominated for the Man Booker Prize, she is the award-winning author of six novels and three short- story collections: The Beautiful Indifference , Madame Zero and Sudden Traveller. She is currently the only author to be four times shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, and twice its winner with 'Mrs Fox' and 'The Grotesques'. Her most recent novel is Burntcoat , which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the USA and he South Bank Sky Arts award, as well as being longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award.