Contributors

John von Sothen is an American writer living in Paris, where he works for Vanity Fair, Esquire and other magazines, does voice-overs for French luxury brands, and occasionally performs stand-up comedy (in French and English!). He lives with his actress wife Anäis, their children Bibi and Otho, and their dog Bogart, who has recently become a rom-com film star.

Susan Southard's first book, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War (2015) received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Nonfiction and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism and Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and was also named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, Economist, Kirkus Reviews, and the American Library Association. Nagasaki has been published in England, Spain, Denmark, China, Taiwan, and Japan, and excerpts of the book have appeared in journals around the world. Southard's work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, and Lapham's Quarterly. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and was a nonfiction fellow at the Norman Mailer Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Southard presents keynote addresses and lectures at international disarmament conferences, universities, and public forums across the United States and abroad. In 2016, she spoke before the United Nations on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
Southard teaches graduate-level nonfiction seminars and has directed creative writing programs for incarcerated youth and at a federal prison for women outside Phoenix. She is the founder and artistic director of the Phoenix-based Essential Theatre, a professional company now in its 30th season serving marginalized communities across the Southwest.

Hannah Lucinda Smith is a writer, consultant and reporter for The Times and The Economist who has spent over 14 years covering the Middle East and the Balkans. A consistent Pulitzer grantee, she has also contributed to the Atlantic, Monocle, Spectator, Wired and TLS, among others, and has featured on BBC TV and radio. She is the author of Erdogan Rising and the co-writer of Zarifa. She is based in Istanbul.

Siddharth Soni is the Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where he is based within Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH). His research spans digital and computational humanities, post-colonial literature and critical archive studies. He also teaches modern and contemporary literature at the English faculty. His first trade book, Monstrous Archives won the Profile Ideas Prize for non-fiction in 2022.

Iain Sinclair was born in South Wales. He went to school in the west of England and university in Dublin. He lives, walks and writes in East London. His books include Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Prize), Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, American Smoke and The Last London.

Living with Buildings is published in association with Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death.

Martin Sixsmith studied Russian at Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne and in St Petersburg, and psychology at Birkbeck and London Metropolitan University. He witnessed the end of the Cold War first hand, reporting for the BBC from Moscow during the presidencies of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He is the author of two novels and several works of non-fiction, including Philomena and Russia: A 1,000 Year Chronicle of the Wild East.

The author of Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television, Lee Siegel is a cultual
commentator and art critic. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Francesca Simon is universally known for the staggeringly popular Horrid Henry series. These books and CDs have sold over 20 million copies in the UK alone and are published in 27 countries. Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman won the Children's Book of the Year award in 2008 at the British Book Awards. She lives in North London with her family.

Kate Simants spent several years as an investigative undercover journalist for Channel 4 and the BBC. She was shortlisted for a CWA Debut Dagger for her first novel Lock Me In and won the UEA Literary Festival scholarship to study for an MA in Crime Fiction. She graduated with distinction. Her second novel, A Ruined Girl, won the Bath Novel Award. Her third novel, Freeze, was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. She lives near Bristol with her family.

Paul Simpson was founding editor of FourFourTwo magazine, and currently edits Champions magazine. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Rough Guide To Elvis and his favourite football team of all-time is Jimmy Bloomfield's Leicester City.

Anne Sinclair is Paul Rosenberg's granddaughter and France's best-known journalist. For thirteen years she was the host of 7 sur 7, a weekly news and politics TV series that had some of the highest viewing figures in France. While there she interviewed all the major global figures of the day, including Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and Madonna. Director of French Huffington Post, Sinclair has written two bestselling books on politics. She sat as the model for the face of Marianne, the national emblem of France whose bust sits in every town hall in France.
My Grandfather's Gallery: France's greatest art dealer and his escape from the Nazis tells the story of Anne Sinclair's grandfather, a fêted member of the Parisian art scene and a friend to the greatest artists of the century, who had to leave France – and his Paris art gallery – during the second world war.

Arun Singh is a leading international business lawyer, non-executive director, corporate educator, visiting professor at UK universities and business schools and a senior government advisor with over 25 years experience. He has worked with companies from a range of sectors, professions and sovereign wealth funds in the US, Europe, Middle East and Asia. He was appointed an OBE for services to international trade and investment in January 1999 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacturers.

Adam Sisman is the author of Boswell's Presumptuous Task, winner of the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the biographer of John Le Carré, A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. Among his other works are two volumes of letters by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the University of St Andrews.

James G. Skakoon is General Manager of VERTEX Technology, an engineering consulting firm. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Navid Sinaki is an artist, filmmaker and poet. He was born in Tehran and currently lives in Los Angeles. His works have screened at museums and art houses around the world, including Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Lincoln Center, British Film Institute, REDCAT, and Cineteca Nacional in Mexico. His writing has most recently appeared in BOMB Magazine. He is a professor at UCLA Extension and a film programmer, most notably at the Echo Park Film Center www.navidsinaki.com