Catherine Butler was born in Hampshire, where she grew up in a small market town near the New Forest. As a child, she spent most of her time wandering woods, trying to learn musical instruments, and learning about myths. She also loved reading ghost stories (both fictional and real) and scaring herself silly. Catherine now lives in Bristol, where she teaches English at a local university. As well as writing books for children and young adults, Catherine writes books about children’s books. Some people think her obsessed. Her books (most of them published under the name Charles Butler) are fantasies, but they are fantasies set in our own world – or in worlds set at a slight, disconcerting angle to our own. They include Calypso Dreaming, The Fetch of Mardy Watt, Death of a Ghost and The Lurkers.
Susan Cooper wrote the classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising, in which one quiet little scene still scares people. She grew up in England but now lives in America, on an island in a Massachusetts saltmarsh. Besides novels and short stories, she has written screenplays and (just once, as co-author) a Broadway play. Her latest book for young adults is called Ghost Hawk, and yes, of course, there’s a ghost in it.
Frances Hardinge was brought up in a sequence of small, sinister English villages, and spent a number of formative years living in a Gothic-looking, mouse-infested hilltop house in Kent. She studied English Language and Literature at Oxford, fell in love with the city’s crazed, archaic beauty, and never found a good enough reason to leave.
Whilst working full time as a technical author for a software company she started writing her first children’s novel, Fly by Night, and was with difficulty persuaded by a good friend to submit the manuscript to Macmillan. Fly by Night went on to win the Branford Boase Award, and was also shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award. Her subsequent books, Verdigris Deep, Gullstruck Island, Twilight Robbery and A Face Like Glass are also aimed at children and young adults.
Frances is seldom seen without her hat and is addicted to volcanoes.
Katherine Langrish is the internationally published author of several children’s fantasy novels including the Viking trilogy Troll Fell, Troll Mill and Troll Blood (HarperCollins), recommended in the School Library Association’s ‘Top 160 Books for Boys’, republished in one volume as West of the Moon. Her fourth book, Dark Angels (US title The Shadow Hunt, HarperCollins) was listed as one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books for Children 2010, and the US Board on Books for Young People’s Outstanding International Books 2011. Her writing is strongly influenced by folklore and legends, and has often been compared with Alan Garner’s. Katherine lives in Oxfordshire and is currently writing a two-part YA dystopia.
Rhiannon Lassiter is an author of science fiction, fantasy, contemporary, ‘realist magicism’, psychological horror and thriller novels for juniors, teenagers and young adults. She was born in 1977 and is the eldest daughter of award-winning children’s author Mary Hoffman.
Rhiannon’s first novel, Hex, was accepted for publication when she was nineteen years old. She completed the book and a sequel while at university reading English Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Rhiannon has published eleven further novels, a non-fiction book about the supernatural and co-edited an anti-war anthology of poetry and prose, Lines in the Sand. Her psychological horror novel Bad Blood was nominated for six awards including the Guardian Prize and the BookTrust Prize. Her most recent novel, Ghost of a Chance, was published in February 2011.
Her favourite authors include Ursula LeGuin, Margaret Mahy and Octavia Butler. Her own novels explore themes of identity, change and becoming.
Rhiannon lives and works in Oxford, United Kingdom. Her ambition is to be the first writer-in-residence on the Moon.
Frances Thomas was born in Wales, but brought up in South London. She has written many books, including, for children, I Found Your Diary and Polly’s Running Away Book. Her most recent adult book is a A Bracelet of Bright Hair and her biography of Christina Rossetti has also just been reissued. She has won the Tir na nOg prize four times for her children’s books. Before she retired she used to also work as a teacher of dyslexic children. Now she lives with her husband in the middle of Wales.
Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, England, where she is co-director of a witchcraft supply business. She is currently published by Bantam Spectra (US) and Tor Macmillan (UK), also Night Shade Press, and appears regularly in Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s and other magazines. She is the secretary of the Milford SF Writers’ Workshop, and also teaches creative writing and the history of Science Fiction.