Roma Agrawal
Roma Agrawal, MBE, is an award-winning engineer, author and broadcaster. She spent six years working on the Shard, designing its foundations and spire. She has featured on BBC World News, BBC Daily Politics, The Evening Standard, The Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Cosmopolitan and Stylist Magazine. She has even featured as a judge of Lego Masters and is winner of a Royal Academy of Engineering Award, ACE Engineering Excellent Awards, Institute of Structural Engineers Lewis Kent Medal and Young Structural Engineer of the Year, Management Today and Women in Construction awards. She is a tireless promoter of engineering and technical careers for young people, particularly under-represented groups such as women. She has advised policymakers and governments on science education and has given talks to thousands around the world at universities, schools and organisations, including two for TEDx.
@romatheengineer
Annemarie Anang
Annemarie Anang is an actor, musician and former primary school teacher. Her picture books I am Nefertiti and Dance Just Like So! have both been shortlisted for The Little Rebels Awards. Both books feature music and movement making them perfect to read aloud for 3–7-year-olds. Annemarie began writing for children after struggling to find books for her daughter that featured main characters who reflected the diversity of children in our world. She campaigns for better mental health and well-being in early years. A Londoner, born to Ghanaian parents, she now lives in Sweden with her young daughter, husband and two adopted cats.
@annemarieauthor
Jesse Bernard
Jesse Bernard is a writer, DJ, music researcher and filmmaker. He has written for publications including GQ, the Guardian, NME, Esquire and Vinyl Factory. He is tour DJ for the British MC Lord Apex and hosts a monthly radio show, Home Comforts, on Voices Radio. His most recent documentary, COMO VOCÊ, explores the links between the grime scene in Brazil and London.
@jesseber.ard
Helen Bowell
Helen Bowell is a poet, producer and editor. Her debut pamphlet The Barman (Bad Betty Press, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her poems, reviews and translations have been published in bath magg, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, Poetry Wales and elsewhere. She co-directs Dead [Women] Poets Society, which resurrects women poets through events and online, and co-guest-edited Modern Poetry in Translation's Autumn 2020 focus on dead women poets. Helen ran Bi+ Lines, a project for bi+ poets, and edited the first anthology of bi+ poets (fourteen poems, 2023). She produced the Poetry Translation Centre's 20th birthday programme of events in 2024.
@helen.bowell on Instagram
Cerrie Burnell
Cerrie Burnell is an author, actor and ambassador. During her time on CBeebies she broke down barriers, challenged stereotypes and overcame discrimination to become one of the most visible presenters on children's TV. She has been listed by the Observer as one of the top ten children's presenters of all time. Cerrie is the author of thirteen children's books including her first non-fiction title, the award-winning I Am Not a Label; Snowflakes, which she adapted for the stage; as well as the Harper series, which was selected for a World Book Day title. She also wrote and starred in the play Winged: A Fairytale, as well as creating the one-woman show The Magical Playroom, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2017 Cerrie was awarded an honorary degree for Services to Media from the Open University. She is a patron of Polka Theatre and has been an author-in-residence at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Since leaving CBeebies in 2017, Cerrie has appeared on television in Doctors and made the eye-opening documentary Silenced: The Hidden Story of Disabled Britain. In 2021 Cerrie joined the BBC's Creative Diversity team as one of their new Disability Ambassadors.
@cerrie.burnell
Harriet Constable
Harriet Constable is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker living in London. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, the Economist, and the BBC, and she is a grantee of the Pulitzer Centre. Raised in a musical family, The Instrumentalist is her first novel. It was selected as one of the Top 10 Debuts of 2024 by the Guardian.
@harriconstable
James Fox
James Fox is an academic and multi-award-winning, BAFTA-nominated broadcaster, known for his many acclaimed BBC documentaries. He is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Creative Director of the Hugo Burge Foundation, a charity dedicated to supporting the arts and crafts across Britain. He is also the author of the celebrated The World According to Colour: A Cultural History.
@jamesfox283
Simon Goddard
Simon Goddard has been writing about music for nearly 30 years. His Bowie Odyssey series has twice made the Sunday Times Books of the Year.
Alexander Larman
Alexander Larman is a journalist and author. His latest book, Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first book to deal with the second half of Bowie's life and career.
@alexlarman
Annie Lyons
After twelve years working in bookselling and publishing, Annie Lyons’ debut novel, Not Quite Perfect, became a number one bestseller. Her 2020 novel, Eudora Honeysett is Quite Well, Thank You was a USA Today bestseller and her first historical fiction novel, The Air Raid Book Club was translated into seven languages. When not working on her novels, Annie teaches creative writing courses at venues within Beckenham Place Park. Annie’s books are available from the Festival bookshop and you can find details of her forthcoming writing courses by visiting https://annielyons.com/courses-2/ or
e-mailing annielyons.writingcourses@gmail.com @annielyonsauthor
Gill O'Halloran
Gill O’Halloran’s a lido-loving Londoner. Her poetry collection, This Seven-Year-Old Walks into a Bar, was placed in the top 20 in 2009’s Small-Press Poetry Awards. Now concentrating on flash fiction, her publications include stories in Bath and Oxford Flash Anthologies and SmokeLong Quarterly literary magazine. Competition wins in 2025 included Editors’ Choice award for UK National Flash Fiction Day, WestWord, and Flash 500, and shortlist/finalist placing for London Independent Story Prize, Fish Publishing, and Cambridge awards. She ran the poetry workshop for the Books in the Park Festival 2024 and is very happy to be returning with a new focus.
@quickasaflash.bsky.social
Paul Sinha
Paul Sinha Former GP Paul Sinha is a champion quizzer, comedian, and broadcaster, best known for his critically acclaimed Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows, Rose d'Or winning work on BBC Radio 4, and for his role as The Sinnerman on ITV's BAFTA award-winning quiz show, The Chase. Although he lives in south London, he's very rarely in.
@paulsinhacomedian_official
Lucy Steeds
Lucy Steeds is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel The Artist, which won the Waterstones Book of the Year 2025 and the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. Educated at Oxford in English and World Literatures, she developed her writing through the Faber Academy and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme while living in France.
@lucysteeds
Chanté Timothy
Chanté Timothy is an illustrator who loves experimenting with movement, vibrant colour, character design and storytelling. Drawing for as long as she can remember, she’s always been the kid who asked for paper and pen to entertain herself instead of playing with toys. Chanté is a Pathways into Children’s Publishing 2019 – 2021 Alumni. She is the illustrator of several non-fiction books and has previously published picture books with Tola Okogwu for Simon & Schuster Children’s Books. Chanté featured in Dapo Adeola’s Hey You! which won Children’s Illustrated Book of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards.
@hey.chante
Ruth Ware
Ruth Ware worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language, and a press officer before settling down as a full-time writer. She now lives with her family in Sussex, on the south coast of England. She is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood; The Woman in Cabin 10; The Lying Game; The Death of Mrs. Westaway; The Turn of the Key; One by One; The It Girl; Zero Days; and One Perfect Couple.
@ruthwarewriter