Contributors

Douglas Wolk is a Portland, Oregon-based author and critic. He has written about comics and popular music for publications including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Washington Post, Nation, New Republic, Salon.com, Pitchfork Media, Vanity Fair, and Believer.

Jasper Winn grew up in West Cork, where he left school age ten and educated himself by reading, riding horses and playing music, an upbringing that shaped a lifetime of travel. He is the author of Paddle: A Long Way Around Ireland (Sort Of Books), the story of a solo trip by kayak, and is currently Writer in Residence for the Canal and River Trust.

Ruth Winstone is the editor of Chris Mullin's trilogy of diaries covering British political life 1994-2010 and of Tony Benn's written and taped records. For many years she worked as a senior clerk in the library of the House of Commons.

Richard Wingate is a principal investigator and lecturer in neuroscience at King's College London. He studies the development and evolution of the cerebellum and has a long standing interest in projects at the interface between Arts and Science.

Deborah Willis is a Canadian writer based in Calgary, Alberta. Her first story collection, Vanishing and Other Stories, was shortlisted for Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction. Her second collection, The Dark and Other Love Stories, was longlisted for the 2017 Giller Prize and won the Georges Bugnet Award for best work of fiction published in Alberta. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Walrus, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Lucky Peach, and Zoetrope. Girlfriend on Mars is her first novel.

Paul Willetts is the author of four acclaimed works of non-fiction, the latest of these being Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms. Since making his literary debut with a biography of the Soho writer and dandy, Julian Maclaren-Ross, he also edited four much-praised collections of Maclaren-Ross's writing. In parallel with these projects, he compiled and worked as co-photographer on Teenage Flicks, a jokey celebration of Subbuteo, featuring contributions by Will Self, Graham Taylor, David Baddiel and others. His journalism has appeared in the Independent, The Times, TLS, Spectator, Independent on Sunday and other publications.

Joy Williams is the author of four novels – the most recent, The Quick and the Dead, was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 – and three collections of stories, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honours are the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Laramie, Wyoming.

Valerie Wilmer is a music historian who has been documenting African-American music since 1959. She has written several books on the subject and documented her life in jazz in her autobiography – Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This. She is on the advisory panel of the prestigious New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and her photography features in the permanent collections of several museums. She lives in London.

Ken Wilkie is an independent writer, editor and creative consultant, based in the Netherlands. He haincluding, for many years, the KLM inflight s launched and edited more than 20 publications
magazine Holland Herald. Ken Wilkie is a many-sided character which is reflected in his journalistic work. Most of his books focus on travel experience and the lives of artists where he combines investigative journalism with a personal style. He was named Journalist of the Year at the 2004 USA Travel Media Awards in London.

Callum Williams is senior economics writer for the Economist. Examining the rationale behind economic and political developments from Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn's policy statements has allowed him to witness the ghosts of the classical economists being invoked in all sorts of doubtful ways.
Follow @econcallum on Twitter

Caroline Williams originally planned to be a PE teacher, but ended up studying biology because she found the science aspects of PE more interesting than the team sports. The author of Override, she is a consultant and writer for New Scientist, and has spent several years researching the links between movement and the mind. Throwing your inner ear off balance will always change how you feel; Caroline likes to improve her mood by cycling down bumpy hills.

Jeff Wilser is the author of four books, including The Good News About What's Bad for You…The Bad News About What's Good for You, named by Amazon as one of the Best Books of the Month in both Nonfiction and Humour. His work has appeared in print or online at GQ, Esquire, New York magazine, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Mental Floss, MTV, and Huffington Post. His TV appearances have ranged from BBC News to The View. He lives in New York.