Contributors

Nicholas Royle was born in Manchester in 1963. He is the author of five novels, including Antwerp. An assiduous champion of the short story, he has written more than 100 tales, which have appeared in a variety of anthologies and magazines. His latest collection is Mortality, shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. He has edited twelve anthologies, including A Book of Two Halves and The Time Out Book of New York Short Stories. He lives in Manchester with his wife and two children, where he teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) is the author of what is probably the most important novel in Mexican literature. Pedro Páramo was published in 1955 and went on to be translated into over forty languages, sell over a million copies in English alone and initiate an entire literary movement. Rulfo's other literary works are The Burning Plain and The Golden Cockerel. He also worked as an anthropologist and photographer.

Maxime Rovere is a philosopher who has dedicated his life to studying the ways we interact, through both the history of philosophy (Spinoza and others in the Early Enlightenment) as well as in contemporary ethics, and now in turning his attention to the scourge of all ages: idiots. Associate Researcher at the École Normale Supérieure (Lyon), he lectures regularly at the universities of Buenos Aires and Montreal and was Council of Humanities Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 2019.

Paul Dalla Rosa is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. His stories have appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Meanjin and New York Tyrant. In 2019, his story 'Comme' was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life is his debut collection.

Jodi Rodgers is an Australian sexologist, counsellor and special education teacher with 30 years of experience working within the education, disability and sexuality fields. Her private practice 'Birds and Bees' helps neurodivergent people create love and connection. She is the on-screen relationship therapist for Netflix's 'Love on the Spectrum', a feel-good dating show for people with autism, broadcast in seven languages.

James A. Robinson is a political scientist and economist and the Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University, and a world-renowned expert on Latin America and Africa. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024 for his work on global inequality.

Judith Rodin is president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a highly influential philanthropic organisation created 'to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.'
As Provost of Yale she was the first woman to serve as president of an Ivy League institution, and has been recognised by Forbes as one of world's 100 most powerful women.

Barnaby Rogerson is an author, publisher and journalist. Together with his partner Rose Baring, he runs Eland Publishing, which specializes in keeping the classics of travel literature in print. He has also written dozens of travel articles, book reviews and historical essays on various North African and Islamic themes, for Vanity Fair, Cornucopia, Conde Nast Traveller, Geographical, Traveller, Guardian, Independent,Telegraph, House & Garden, Harpers & Queen and the TLS.

Kenneth R. Rosen is an author and journalist who has reported from more than 30 countries, including Ukraine, Syria and Iraq. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian, FT Magazine, New Statesman, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of numerous accolades for his reporting, including France's prestigious Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents.

Denis Robert is a French journalist, novelist, essayist and film director, who is renowned for uncovering political and financial scandals and for his unconventional journalism. Happiness is his first novel.

Bethan Roberts was born in Abingdon. Her first novel The Pools was published in 2007 and won a Jerwood/Arvon Young Writers' Award. Her second, The Good Plain Cook, published in 2008, was serialized on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime and was chosen as one of Time Out's books of the year. Two further novels, My Policeman and Mother Island, followed. Bethan has worked in television documentary, and has taught Creative Writing at Chichester University and Goldsmiths College, London. She lives in Brighton with her family.

Knud Romer, the author of this autobiographical novel, was born in 1960 in Falster, 'a town so small that it is over before it starts'. His studies include the theory of fiction and he has written on subjects as diverse as mint lozenges and auto-erotic suicide. When not writing, he acts. His credits include The Idiots by Lars von Trier and Allegro by Christopher Boe.

Larry Robertson founded leadership and communication consultancy Robertson Burns in 1993. A Brit who settled in Australia after an early career as an Army officer and in advertising, he has been working with executives from some of the world's largest organisations, including Ashurst, AstraZeneca, BHP, Boston Consulting Group, Coutts & Co, Fujitsu, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, PwC, Qantas and The Royal Bank of Canada.