Contributors

Katherine Ashenburg has worked as an academic, a CBC Radio producer and the Arts and Books editor of the Globe and Mail. She has written for the New York Times and her books include and The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die. She lives in Toronto.

Reinaldo Arenas was born in Holguín, Cuba, in 1943. His first novel, Singing from the Well, was awarded First Mention in Cuba's Cirilo Villaverde National Competition. It was to be his only book published in his native country. Both as a homosexual and a writer, he found himself persecuted by the Cuban government, and had to smuggle his work out of the country for publication in France. He left Cuba in 1980 and settled in New York, where he died of AIDS in 1990. He is the author of over 20 books, including novels, short stories and poems.

Oana was born in Transylvania, to parents of Romanian, Greek and Yemeni background. After the fall of communism the family emigrated to Sweden. Oana has worked in the City of London as a macroeconomist, and as an advisor to the Romanian prime minister, but since 2018 she has lived on a Greek island, converting a heritage villa into a hotel.

Roberto Arlt was born in Buenos Aires in 1900, the son of a Prussian immigrant from Poznán, Poland. Brought up in the city's crowded tenement houses – the same tenements which feature in The Seven Madmen – Arlt had a deeply unhappy childhood and left home at the age of sixteen. As a journalist, Arlt described the rich and vivid life of Buenos Aires; as an inventor, he patented a method to prevent ladders in women's stockings. Arlt died suddenly of a heart attack in Buenos Aires in 1942. He was the author of the novels The Mad Toy, The Flamethrowers, Love the Enchanter and several plays.

Nina Renata Aron is a writer and editor living in Oakland, California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.

Alice Ash is a writer and maker of short films. Her story 'Eggs' was longlisted for the Galley Beggar Prize 2019, and her writing has been featured in Hotel, 3:AM Magazine, the TLS and Extra Teeth, among others. She is based in Brighton. Find her on Twitter as @aliceash_.

Tariq Ashkanani is a solicitor and co-host of the writing podcast Page One. His debut novel, Welcome to Cooper, won the Bloody Scotland Debut Award 2022, as well as being shortlisted for both the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Capital Crime Fingerprint Award. His second novel, Follow Me to the Edge, was published in 2022. His upcoming novel, The Midnight King, will be published by Viper in 2025. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and two sons.

John Appel volunteered to jump out of planes before he'd ever been in a plane; his friends and family say this sums up his approach to life pretty well. He writes science fiction and fantasy and the occasional tabletop RPG adventure. A lifelong Marylander, he lives in the Baltimore suburbs with his wife and children. He masquerades as a technology risk manager to pay the bills after two decades as an information security pro. When not writing, rolling dice, or keeping the bad guys at bay, he enjoys rum and swords, but not both at the same time. John is a graduate of the Viable Paradise writing workshop.

Ash Ali is an award-winning serial tech entrepreneur and investor. As the first marketing director of Just Eat UK, a FTSE 100 startup that IPO'd for £1.5 billion, and with over 20 years of hands-on experience in launching, growing and advising startups, he is an outspoken patron of social mobility and continuous education. The Unfair Advantage is his first book.

Tom Allan has been working as a thatcher since 2012. Based in South Devon, he also writes for the Guardian's Country Diary and the travel section of the Financial Times. He can be found at tomallanthatching.co.uk

William Allison worked extensively in Fleet Street and for BBC television news.

Alan Allport is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Syracuse University. He is the author of three previous volumes of history, Browned Off and Bloody-Minded, Demobbed – winner of the 2010 Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award – and Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941.

Ella Al-Shamahi is a National Geographic Explorer, paleoanthropologist, evolutionary biologist and stand-up comic. She specialises in Neanderthals, caves and expeditions in hostile, disputed and unstable territories. She is a TV presenter, a TED 2019 speaker and has taken 4 shows up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has degrees in Genetics, Taxonomy and Biodiversity and is undertaking her PhD in Palaeoanthropology.