Stephen Merchant is a British writer, director, radio presenter, stand-up comedian, and actor. He is best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais, as the co-writer and co-director of the popular British sitcom The Office, as the co-writer, co-director and a co-star of Extras, and as the co-host of The Ricky Gervais Show in its radio, podcast, audiobook and television-show forms.
Charles Montgomery was born in 1968 and spent his formative years on a farm on Vancouver Island. He has been a writer and photojournalist for ten years, and lives in Mexico City and Vancouver. ‘The Shark God’ is his first book.
Judith Claire Mitchell, author of ‘The Last Day of the War’, is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, she currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, the artist Don Friedlich.
Travis Mulhauser is from Petoskey, Michigan. He lives currently in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and two children and earned his MFA from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.
Eve Makis studied at Leicester University and worked as a journalist and radio presenter in the UK and Cyprus before becoming a novelist. Her first novel, Eat, Drink and be Married, published by Transworld, was awarded the Young Booksellers International Book of the Year Award.Her fourth novel, The Spice Box Letters, published in five languages, was shortlisted for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, the East Midlands Book Award and received the Aurora Mardiganian Gold Medal.
Anne-Marie MacDonald is a novelist and dramatist. FALL ON YOUR KNEES became a much-loved international bestseller when in was published in 1996; it has since been published in 21 countries. Winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book as well as numerous other literary awards it has sold over 2 million copies worldwide.
Darran McCann was born in Co. Armagh in 1979. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University before becoming a journalist with Belfast’s Irish News. He went on to write, teach and study at Queen’s University Belfast. His play, Confession, was produced at the Brian Friel Theatre in Belfast in 2008. He lives in Ireland with his family.
Dr Thomas Fink is a research fellow in the Department of Physics who usually works on protein folding optimisation theory. Dr Yong Mao is a research fellow at the Department of Physics who usually works on polymers and colloids. They both wear ties.
