Contributors

Nat Ogle was born in 1991 and raised in Darlington, County Durham. He works as a bookseller in London.
In the Seeing Hands of Others is his first novel.

Catherine O'Flynn was born in Birmingham in 1970, where she grew up in and around her parents' sweet shop as the youngest child of a large family. She has been a teacher, web editor, mystery customer and postwoman. What Was Lost won the Costa First Novel Award 2007 and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and longlisted for the Orange and Man Booker prizes. She is the author of two further novels – The News From Where You Are and Mr Lynch's Holiday.

David Ogilvy CBE is often described as the 'Father of Advertising'. Before founding New York agency Ogilvy & Mather in 1948, he pursued several career paths, working as a chef at the Majestic in Paris Ritz, an AGA salesman and a farmer. His iconic campaigns include legendary adverts for Dove, Hathaway, Rolls Royce and Guinness. He died in 1999.

Redmond O'Hanlon is best known for his journeys into some of the most remote jungles of the world. His books include Congo Journey, Into the Heart of Borneo, In Trouble Again, and Trawler.

John O'Connell is a writer, editor and researcher who has written for the Guardian, The Times, the New Statesman and TimeOut. He is the author of, among others, For The Love of Letters, The Book of Spice, and the acclaimed Bowie's Books.

Richard O'Connor is the author of five books, Undoing Depression, Active Treatment of Depression, Undoing Perpetual Stress, Happy At Last, and Rewire. For fourteen years he was executive director of the Northwest Center for Family Service and Mental Health, overseeing the treatment of almost a thousand patients per year. He is a practicing psychotherapist, with offices in Canaan, Connecticut, and New York City, and he lives with his family in Lakeville, Connecticut.

James J. O'Donnell, author of Augustine:Sinner and Saint, The Ruin of the Roman Empire, and the forthcoming Pagans, is an academic turned administrator who uses his wide-ranging world travels to inform and inspire his writing. Educated at Princeton and Yale, long on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, he is now Provost of Georgetown University.

Peter O'Donnell began his career working on several major pre-war comics, Tiger Tim, Chips and Captain Moonlight. During the 1950's he became involved in strip cartoons and eventually created his revolutionary Modesty Blaise, syndicated in more than 42 countries. The strip led to a series of bestselling novels about Modesty and her faithful lieutenant, Willie Garvin, all published by Souvenir Press: Modesty Blaise, Sabre Tooth, I, Lucifer, The Impossible Virgin, Pieces of Modesty, A Taste for Death, The Silver Mistress, Dragon's Claw, The Xanadu Talisman, The Night of the Morningstar, Dead Man's Handle and his most recent collection Cobra Trap.

As well as being a respected journalist and editor focussed on retail and information technology, Penelope Ody qualified as a medical herbalist in the 1980s and practised part-time for 11 years. She has written more than 20 books on herbal topics, edited The Herb Society's journals from 1988 to 1994 and has written on herbal and health topics for several consumer magazines.

She frequently gives talks on herbal topics for both the general public and specialist groups and since 2002 she has held day courses on various herbal subjects at her home in Hampshire.

Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) studied painting with Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand Léger in Paris, before returning to Buenos Aires. Her first collection of stories, Forgotten Journey appeared in 1937. She was also a prolific poet and translator. Ocampo was reportedly denied Argentina's National Prize for fiction in 1979 after judges decided her work was 'too cruel'.

Flann O'Brien was a pseudonym of Brian O'Nolan. Born in Strabane, County Tyrone, he spent most of his life in Dublin, where he worked as a civil servant and died in 1966. Best known for The Third Policeman and At Swim-Two-Birds, he is one of the most influential Irish writers of the twentieth century, regarded by many as its answer to Nabokov, and his books are dazzling works of farce, satire, folklore and absurdity.

Alex O'Brien is a London based science writer and thinker. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, BBC, New Scientist and The Times. Shortlisted for Best Newcomer in 2016 by the Association of British Science Writers where she is now vice-chair, O'Brien is an advocate for early critical thinking; in 2022 she founded the Young Science Writer Award, aimed at engaging state-educated young people toward a career in STEM related subjects. The Truth Detective is her first book.

Colin O'Brien is an Irish sports writer based in Rome. His passion for cycling and the European professional racing scene was ignited when Marco Pantani and the world's best riders came to Dublin with the 1998 Tour de France. He contributes to leading publications worldwide, including Rouleur, Peloton, Cyclist, and ProCycling.

Christopher Nye was born and raised in West Sussex. His childhood ambitions were to become a Zulu, and then a diplomat, but thwarted by poor A level grades he settled for a course in hotel and catering management at Leeds Poly. His subsequent career ranged from sculpting celery on a Caribbean cruise ship to running the crêpe stand on Brighton pier, before he hit on the plan of bringing his unique Diner cuisine to the people of small town Britain, starting out with Uckfield…

Christopher currently lives in Lewes, where he works as a freelance journalist (oh alright, and as a taxi driver).