Contributors

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.

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.

Niall Murtagh grew up in Dublin. After hitchhiking across Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America in the 1980s, he settled down in Japan, first as a student, then as an ordinary employee of Mitsubishi. He has written for various publications, in both English and Japanese, on travel, technology and corporate culture. He works as a translator and lectures in Hosei University, Tokyo.

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.

Alice Munro is the author of thirteen short story collections and one novel. She has won numerous prizes and awards, including the International Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Governor General's Award. She was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature.

'Munro changed our sense of what the short story can do as radically as Chekhov … she penetrates in words into the hidden roots of how we choose to live, and why we act' New Yorker

Herta Muller was born in Timis, Romania in 1953. A vocal memeber of the German minority, she was forced to leave the country in 1987. In that year, she went to west Berlin where she now lives. She was recently awarded the prestigious Ricarda-Huch Prize. Her books have been translated into all European languages – this edition of The Passport is the first publication of Herta Muller in English.

Chris Mullin was elected labour MP for Sunderland South in 1987. He chaired the Home Affairs Select Committee and was a minister in three departments. He is the author of the A View From the Foothills and Decline and Fall(Profile) and the novel A Very British Coup (Serpent's Tail)

Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch (1927-2010) was a Dutch writer. He wrote more than 80 novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections. Mulisch's works have been translated into 38 languages so far. Along with Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve, Mulisch is considered one of the "Great Three" of Dutch post-war literature.

Kate Mosse is an international bestselling novelist, playwright and nonfiction author with sales of more than eight million copies in 38 languages. Renowned for bringing unheard and under-heard histories to life, she is a champion of women's creativity. Kate is the Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction, sits on the Executive Committee of Women of the World and is a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Kate lives in West Sussex with her husband and mother-in-law.

The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. It is a celebration of both the raconteur, who breathes fire into true tales of ordinary life, and the storytelling novice, who has lived through something extraordinary and yearns to share it. At the centre of each performance is, of course, the story – and The Moth's directors work with each storyteller to find, shape and present it.

Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has presented thousands of stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide.

Moth shows are renowned for the great range of human experience they showcase. Each show starts with a theme, and the storytellers explore it, often in unexpected ways. Since each story is true and every voice authentic, the shows dance between documentary and theatre, creating a unique, intimate, and often enlightening experience for the audience.

Moth stories dissolve socio-economic barriers, expose vulnerabilities, and quietly suggest ways to overcome challenges and see with new eyes.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, and is founding director of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative. The author of 19 books, she advises CEOs of large and small companies and has received 23 honorary doctoral degrees, as well as numerous leadership awards and prizes for her books and articles.