James lives in Manchester with his two favourite humans: the one he married and the one that popped out of that one. He likes sprinting after balls, waterslides and other people’s dogs. He has been known to perform stand-up comedy, but not very well known. He took his A-level Art when he was eleven years old. And failed it. Sometimes he misses having hair.
Helen Docherty is a children’s author whose picture books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. Her picture books include The Snatchabook, The Knight Who Wouldn’t Fight, which was shortlisted for Oscar’s Book Prize, and Blue Baboon Finds Her Tune, one of Amazon’s Best Children’s Books 2022 – all illustrated by her husband Thomas Docherty. Helen lives in Swansea, Wales.
Salomey Doku is a self-taught author-illustrator from Leeds. Originally trained in architecture, she started watercolour painting in 2018 and quickly fell in love with the art of storytelling. When she is not drawing, she is either daydreaming, going on long walks, at church, or talking to her pet hedgehog Strawberry. Brielle & Bear is her first graphic novel.
Megan Davidhizar grew up moving around the American Midwest. She now spends her mornings wishing she liked coffee, her days learning from the students in her English classroom, and her evenings reading stories to her three children while her husband tries to convince them the movies are better.
Julia Donaldson is the internationally renowned author of the best-loved picture books in the world, including The Gruffalo, What the Ladybird Heard, Sugarlump and the Unicorn and Night Monkey, Day Monkey. Julia Donaldson’s collaborations with Axel Scheffler have sold millions of copies, and Room on the Broom is now an Academy Award-nominated short film.
Debra Driza is a member of the teen-lit blogging group the Bookanistas and a former practising physical therapist, who discovered tormenting her characters was infinitely more enjoyable. These days you can find her at home in California, adding random colours to her hair and wrangling one husband, two kids, and an assortment of Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Mila 2.0 is her first novel.
