Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock (MBE) is a space scientist and pioneering figure in communicating science to children and adults. She is committed to inspiring new generations of astronauts, engineers and scientists.

Dr. Aderin-Pocock has spoken directly to over 350,000 people globally and, in 2009, was appointed an MBE for her services to science and education. She currently presents The Sky at Night and Mini Stargazing series on CBeebies. In 2016. she was nominated for a Children’s Presenter BAFTA and she recently won the Institute of Physics gold medal for exceptional services to science education and physics communication. She is currently the President of the British Science Association.

Onjali Q. Rauf

Onjali Q. Raúf MBE is a multi-award-winning children’s author and women’s and refugee human rights activist. She is the founder and CEO of Making Herstory, which works to end the abuse, enslavement and trafficking of women and girls in the UK, and O’s Refugee Aid Team which mobilises aid convoys and funds to help frontline refugee response teams across northern France and beyond.

Rauf is the author of Sunday Times bestseller, The Boy at the Back of the Class, which won the 2019 Blue Peter Award, the 2019 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the 2020 Sakura Medal of Japan and the 2022 Janusz Korczak Prize, among others. Her other stories include The Star Outside My Window, The Night Bus Hero, The Great Food Bank Heist, and The Lion Above the Door. Her latest work, Hope on the Horizon, is a non-fiction children’s guide to empathy, kindness and creating a better world.

Rauf is a Patron of VIP Reading, Facefront Theatre, and NIA Women; an Ambassador for Museum of the Home (London), and a contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought. An alumnus of the Cambridge University Senior Faith in Leadership programme, she was listed as one of BBC’s 100 most influential women from around the world in 2019. Her first children’s play, The Hero Next Door, is scheduled to be staged in London in the spring of 2023. She was awarded an MBE in 2022 for her services to women’s rights and children’s literature.

Philip Reeve

Philip Reeve started out as an illustrator for the popular Horrible Histories series before publishing his first novel Mortal Engines in 2001. Since then, he has written over 20 books, including sequels and prequels to Mortal Engines, the Carnegie Medal-winning Here Lies Arthur, the Railhead trilogy, and most recently, two historical fantasies: Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep and Utterly Dark and the Heart of the Wild. He also collaborates with co-author and illustrator Sarah McIntyre on funny and adventurous stories for younger readers such as Pugs of the Frozen North and the Roly-Poly Flying Pony series.

Rhianna Pratchett

There are few entertainment fields that Rhianna Pratchett hasn’t written for. In her award-winning work for video games, she’s crafted titles such as Heavenly Sword, Mirror’s Edge, the entire Overlord series, Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Lost Words: Beyond the Page.

In the world of comics, Pratchett has contributed stories for DC, Dark Horse, Dynamite, Marvel and Kodansha. Some of her favourite achievements in that field include creating an origin story for Red Sonja’s chainmail bikini and having Lara Croft fight bad guys on the London Underground whilst dressed as one of the Bennet sisters.

In film and TV, Pratchett has worked with Motive Pictures, Film4, New Regency, Complete Fiction, The Jim Henson Company and The Bureau. She is also co-director of Narrativia, the multi-media production company that control the rights to the works of Sir Terry Pratchett – her late father.

Most recently, she wrote the Fighting Fantasy novel Crystal of Storms. The first woman to do so in the history of the nostalgia-inducing franchise. She also co-authored the hilarious Campaigns & Companions: The Complete Roleplaying Guide for Pets. Pratchett lives in London with her partner and two neurotic tabbies. She makes a damn fine tiramisu.

Wafa’ Tarnowska

Wafa’ Tarnowska is an award-winning children’s author, translator and storyteller who was born in Lebanon and lived in many countries including the UAE. She currently resides between the UK and Poland when she’s not a World Bedouin. Her book, Arabian Nights, won the American Folklore Society Aesop Accolade, the Moonbeam Gold Medal and was a Smithsonian Magazine Notable Book for Children. Her anthology Amazing Women of the Middle East includes biographies of 25 Middle Eastern women who are trailblazers in their fields. Her book Nour’s Secret Library won the 2022 IPPY Gold Award for illustrated children’s books. It was featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Times, and the Sunday Times as one of the best children’s books of 2022. It has also been longlisted for the World Illustration Awards.