Sav Akyüz

Sav Akyüz is a storyboard artist and director based in North London and has worked on many pieces alongside TV advertising executives, including a John Lewis Christmas advert! His past careers also include being a visual effects artist on numerous feature films and selling 99 Flake’s outside the Tate Britain.

Sav’s children’s books with Ben Bailey Smith include I Am Bear and Bear Moves.

Sam Copeland

Sam Copeland is an author, which has come as something of a shock to him. He is from Manchester and now lives in London with two smelly cats, three smelly children and one relatively clean-smelling wife. His phenomenally popular Charlie Changes Into a Chicken, which was illustrated by Sarah Horne, was the second bestselling middle grade debut of 2019 and has been sold in 26 languages, shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, longlisted for the Blue Peter and Branford Boase Awards, and selected for Empathy Lab’s 2020 Read for Empathy list. His new book is Uma and the Answer to Absolutely Everything.

Isabel Thomas

Isabel Thomas is a science writer and author of more than 150 books about science and nature for young audiences. She was awarded the 2020 AAAS Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Books, and has previously been shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize. Isabel also writes for science magazines and works with organisations such as Wellcome Trust and the University of Oxford to create outreach resources, inspiring children from diverse backgrounds to pursue STEM careers.

Isabel holds an MA in Human Sciences from the University of Oxford, and an MPhil in Educational Research from the University of Cambridge. She lives in Cambridge, UK, with her husband and three young sons.

Julia Johnson

Julia Johnson has read stories on radio and TV, narrated stories for audio-book companies, run drama workshops for young people and toured schools with Theatre-in-Education productions. A thirst for adventure brought Julia and her architect husband Brian to Dubai more than forty years ago, long before the skyscrapers and smart hotels and fancy shopping malls.

A desire to share her discoveries about the region’s fascinating past, ancient culture and traditions led to her first story, The Pearl Diver, now read and enjoyed in primary schools throughout the Gulf. Her fascination with pearl diving led to a darker, grittier book for older readers, The Pearl Diver’s Son. Both stories were recently chosen by the Ministry of Education for its “Reading for Pleasure” project and distributed to every government school in the UAE.

Julia has published more than twenty-five books, including The Leopard Boy, The Turtle Secret, which won the Sharjah International Book Fair Best International Children’s Book Award 2014 and The Secret of the Cave, which won Best International Children’s Book award at the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival 2019. Her latest story, Where Is Everyone, was written to encourage children to talk about their feelings and anxiety caused by Covid-19 and follows a group of puzzled animals during the 2020 pandemic trying to find out where all the humans have gone.

Ali Sparkes

Ali Sparkes is the award-winning author of the Shapeshifter series, Frozen In Time and Car-Jacked. The final book in her most recent fantasy adventure series – Night Forever – reaches its heart-stopping conclusion at the top of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.

Ali lives in Hampshire, England, with her husband, sons (on occasion) and a large, lively labradoodle called Willow.