Contributors

Alan Jacobs is the Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Baylor University. He has written extensively for The Atlantic, WSJ, The New Atlantis, and Harper's and is the author of several books including a well-received biography of C. S. Lewis and a book on the pleasures of reading.

Henry James Garrett has written and illustrated for The New York Times, created Valentine's cards for The Fawcett Society, provided a drawing of Meghan Markle's dog as a gift for her, cartooned for the i Newspaper, Buzzfeed and London Pride, had solo exhibitions in London and a beautiful phonebox in Brighton and made greeting cards. He can be found on Instagram @henryjgarrett.

Paul Jankowski is Raymond Ginger Professor of History at Brandeis University. His many publications include Stavinksy: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue; Shades of Indignation: Political Scandals in France, Past and Present; and most recently, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War.

Sarah Jaffe is a writer and reporter living in London and on the road. She is the author of Work Won't Love You Back, Necessary Trouble and From the Ashes.

Her journalism covers the politics of power, from the workplace to the streets, and her work has featured in the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Baffler, Washington Post and New York Review of Books among many others. She is a columnist at The Progressive and a contributing writer at In These Times. She also co-hosts the Belabored podcast, with Michelle Chen, covering today's labour movement, and Heart Reacts, with Craig Gent, an advice podcast for the collapse of late capitalism.

Sarah has been a waitress, a bicycle mechanic, and a social media consultant, cleaned up trash and scooped ice cream and explained Soviet communism to middle schoolers. Journalism pays better than some of these.

Masood Javaid is Senior Advisor in the Managing Director's Office to a large sovereign wealth fund. Prior to that, he held senior positions at Mercury Asset Management and Merrill Lynch, and managed the UK's Post Office and British Telecom pension fund assets in the 1990s. He was also an Assistant Professor in Finance and Financial Economics at Warwick Business School.

David Jackson is the author of twelve crime novels, including the bestseller Cry Baby and the DS Nathan Cody series. A latecomer to fiction writing, after years of writing academic papers he submitted the first few chapters of a novel to the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Awards. He was very surprised when it was both short-listed and Highly Commended, leading to the publication of Pariah in 2011. David lives on the Wirral with his wife and two daughters.

Award-winning poet, Kathleen Jamie was born in the west of Scotland in 1962. Her first travel book, Among Muslims (also published by Sort Of Books), was described as 'utterly luminous' (The Independent) and 'one of the most powerful accounts by a contemporary Western writer' (TLS).

Her latest poetry collection, The Tree House (Picador), won the 2004 Forward prize.

A part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at St Andrews University, Kathleen Jamie lives with her family in Fife.

The writer and artist Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is best known as the creator of the Moomin children's stories, which have been published in 35 languages. The Summer Book was one of ten novels she wrote for adults. It is regarded as a modern classic throughout Scandinavia.

John Hull was Professor of Religious Education at the University of Birmingham. He died in July 2015.

Born in London in 1960, Frieda Hughes is a painter and poet. She has written several children's books, eight collections of poetry, articles for magazines and newspapers, and was the Times Poetry columnist. As a painter, Frieda regularly exhibits in London and has a permanent exhibition at her private gallery in Wales, where she resides with 14 owls, two rescue huskies, an ancient Maltese terrier, five chinchillas, a ferret called 'Socks', a Royal python and her motorbikes.

Kathryn Hurlock is Professor of Religious and Military History at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of Britain, Ireland and the Crusades and Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, among others. She has featured on BBC Breakfast and You're Dead To Me and in the Independent.

C.E. Hulse lives in Manchester with her husband and a small controlling dog. She is the author of four books under the name Caroline Hulse: The Adults, Like a House on Fire, All the Fun of the Fair, and Reasonable People. Her work has been published in fourteen languages and optioned for television. Vivian Dies Again is her debut crime novel.

Novelist and poet Michel Houellebecq was born in 1958, on the French island of Reunion. At the age of six, Michel was given over to the care of his paternal grandmother, a communist, whose family name he later adopted. Houellebecq has won many prizes, including the Prix Flore in 1996, the Grand Prix National des Lettres Jeunes Talents in 1998, the Prix Novembre and, most recently, the Prix Goncourt in 2010. His first album, Presence Humaine, was released in 2000. He currently lives in Spain.

Langston Hughes was born in 1902. His first poem in a nationally known magazine was 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' which appeared in Crisis in 1921. In 1925, Hughes was awarded the first Prize for Poetry by Opportunity magazines for his poem 'The Weary Blue' which gave its title to his first book of poems, published in 1926. He wrote poetry, short stories, song lyrics, essays, humour and plays, and an autobiography, The Big Sea.