Contributors

Jane Darke is a writer, documentary film maker and painter. She lives and works in Cornwall.

Gillian Darley writes widely in the arts media, mostly about architecture and landscape. She is president of the Twentieth Century Society and has written acclaimed biographies of Octavia Hill, John Evelyn and John Soane – the latter two shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. Her most recent book is Ian Nairn: Words in Place (Five Leaves Publications, with David McKie). She lives in London.

Kate Daly is the founder of the award-winning separation service amicable, and is a leading expert on divorce, separation and family law reform. She spearheaded the campaign to introduce no-fault divorce in the UK in 2022, and is the host of The Divorce Podcast. She is a certified relationship counsellor and resolution-trained family consultant. amicable divorce is her first book.

Peter Culshaw was once described by Malclm McLaren as 'the Indiana Jones of world music'. His assignments have included reports from the Amazon and Siberia. He has profiled many leading classical, world and jazz musicians from the Observer andDaily Telegraph, as well as BBC radio. He is currently music editor for theartsdesk.com

Mark Curtis is an author, journalist and consultant: his previous books include Web of Deceit and Unpeople. He is a former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and was until recently Director of the World Development Movement. He has worked in the field of international development for 14 years, including as Head of Global Advocacy and Policy at Christian Aid and Head of Policy at ActionAid.

Born in 1949, Didier Daeninckx lives in Paris. Recognised as France's leading left-wing mystery writer, his work is translated into all European languages. His 1984 novel Murder in Memoriam forced the French government to try Nazi collaborators, led to a life of imprisonment for Paul Touvier and made President Mitterrand declare 16 July a day of national reflection on fascism and racism.

Laura Dave was born in New York City and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English, and went on to gain an MFA from the University of Virginia's creative writing program. She was a Henry Hoyns Fellow and a recipient of the Tennessee Williams Scholarship. She is the national and international bestselling author of Eight Hundred Grapes, London is the City in America, The Divorce Party, The First Husband, Hello, Sunshine and The Last Thing He Told Me. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, Glamour, Redbook, The Huffington Post and The New York Observer. In 2008, Cosmopolitan named her a 'Fun and Fearless Phenom of the Year'. She is married to Oscar-winning screenwriter Josh Singer, with whom she resides in Los Angeles, California.

Emma Dabiri is an Irish-Nigerian academic,
author and broadcaster. She spent over a decade as a teaching fellow in the African department at SOAS. She is a final year Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths, and author of the Sunday Times bestseller What White People Can Do Next and Don't Touch My Hair. In 2023 she was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has presented several television and radio programmes including BBC Radio 4's critically-acclaimed documentaries Journeys into Afro-futurism and Britain's Lost Masterpieces, as well as BBC 2's Back in Time for Brixton and the Cannes Silver Lion award-winning Hair Power for Channel 4. She is a Contributing Editor at Elle and runs the Instagram account, Disobedient Bodies.

Joshua Paul Dale is a Professor in the Department of English Literature and Culture at Chuo University in Tokyo. Since moving to Japan in the 1990s, Dale has pioneered the field of cuteness studies, and is the co-editor of The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness, and edited 'Cute Studies', a special issue of The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture. Dale has been featured as an expert on cuteness by media outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, National Geographic, the Guardian, The Cut, Refinery29 and Discover Magazine.

Kate Collins was born in Cork, Ireland and has spent her career in trade and academic publishing. She studied literature and medieval history at Lancaster University and went on to complete an Master's degree in contemporary literature at the same university. She lives in Oxfordshire

Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collections, I Was Told There'd Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number, as well as the bestselling novel, The Clasp. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, New Yorker, Esquire, Vogue, New York Times Magazine and on NPR. She was named as a Guggenheim Fellow in 2025, and is a contributing editor at Interview Magazine and Vanity Fair. She lives in New York.

Dennis Cooper is the winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award for Closer, and Guide was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and one of its Ten Best Books of the Year. He lives in Los Angeles.