Contributors

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.

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.

Michel Nieva is an Argentinian writer based in New York, where he teaches Writing at NYU. Nominated among Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists in 2021 and a winner of the O. Henry Award in 2022, Nieva has previously published short stories and essays. Dengue Boy is his
first novel.

Mehmet Murat Somer was born in Ankara in 1959. After graduating from university, he worked for a short time as an engineer, and for an extended period as a banker. Since 1994, he has been a management consultant, conducting corporate seminars on management skills and personal development. When not working out in the hammam, he writes books in the Hop-Ciki-Yaya series, of which there are now 6.

Gareth Murphy was raised in Dublin surrounded by music and the musicians his father worked with as a concert promoter. He has worked at various record companies and produced thirty electronic compilations. He now runs his own company, Atlantis Recordings. As well as composing and producing original music, he is a freelance writer and researcher for journals and think-tanks. Murphy lives in Paris with his wife and three-year-old son.

J.B. Mylet was inspired to write The Homes by the stories his mother told him about her childhood. She grew up in the infamous Quarrier's Homes in Scotland in the 1960s, along with a thousand other orphaned or unwanted children, and did not realise that children were supposed to live with their parents until she was seven. He felt this was a story that needed to be told. He lives in London.

Alix Nathan lives in the Welsh Marches where she owns some ancient woodland with her husband. Her short stories have been published in Ambit, The London Magazine, New Welsh Review and read on BBC Radio 4. Her last two novels were published by Parthian Press.

Leonora Nattrass studied eighteenth-century literature and politics, and spent ten years lecturing in English and publishing works on William Cobbett. She lives in Cornwall, in a seventeenth-century house with seventeenth-century draughts, and spins the fleeces of her Ryeland sheep into yarn. Her first novel, Black Drop, was published in 2021, and was a Times Book of the Year. Her second, Blue Water, was published in 2022 and was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month and shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award. Her third novel, Scarlet Town, was also shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award. Her fourth novel, standalone historical mystery The Bells of Westminster, will be published by Viper in 2024.

Gregory Neale is an alumnus of Pembroke College, which he attended as a mature student. He has had a distinguished career in national journalism. He was the founding editor of BBC History Magazine, for which he won two 'Editor of the Year' awards from the British Society of Magazine Editors, and had a lengthy spell as environment correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, reporting from around the world in the 1980s and 1990s. He has also worked for The Times, The Guardian and The Observer among other British newspapers, and was "resident historian" for BBC Television's Newsnight programme, as well as being an honorary visiting fellow and oral historian for the University of York. Until recently years he served as co-leader of the Resurgence Trust and Editor-in-Chief of its Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy is a physician, researcher, public health expert, and entrepreneur. From 2014 to 2017, he served as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States. His writings have been published in leading medical journals, newspapers and magazines, and his work has been covered extensively in national and international media.

Rebecca Nesbit is an ecologist and author, writing on science and the ethical questions it raises, in particular in relation to conservation. She is the author of Is that Fish in your Tomato?, which explored the benefits and the risks of genetically modified foods. After graduating from Durham University, she worked in scientific research, chiefly on butterfly migrations, before working on a program training honeybees to detect explosives. She has worked for the Royal Society of Biology and Nobel, and is a contributor to Scientific American, The Biologist and Popular Science.