Ruth Millington is an art historian and author, researching and writing about great artists, muses and masterpieces. For her first adult art book, Muse, Ruth worked like an art detective, uncovering the real-life people found in famous portraits. She has appeared on TV and radio, telling stories about Surrealism, Frida Kahlo and other artists from around the world. She was brought up on the sunny island of Bermuda but now lives in the rainier city of Birmingham in England. When she is not working, Ruth loves to read, sing along to music and decorate her home with lots and lots of art. She also likes to drink tea and paint pictures, and sometimes dips brushes in her mug by accident!

Ellen Surrey is an illustrator out of sunny Los Angeles, California. Blending her love of mid-century design and vintage children’s books, Ellen enjoys finding beauty in the past and colourfully sharing it with a contemporary audience. She’s illustrated many books about inspirational people, including Dolly Parton! Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Los Angeles Times. When she isn’t working, Ellen enjoys watching old movies and visiting her favourite thrift stores.

Deborah started illustrating as a child and now has more than 40 picture books and several awards with her name on them. She lives in London with her partner and two cats and when she’s not drawing, painting or snipping paper, you’ll find her messing around with horses, messing around in the sea, or searching for bats and moths.

Angela Keoghan is a former photographer turned illustrator from New Zealand. She spent much of her childhood surrounded by animals, drawing, reading, making huts and having adventures in the rural pastures ofthe Waikato. She graduated with a Bachelor of Media Arts with Honours in 2002 from WINTEC and since 2009 has been full time illustrating, working on projects ranging from editorial, product illustration, advertising and publishing. She loves texture and her whimsical illustration uses a mixture of media created on and off the computer. Angela lives in the countryside with her husband and business partner, Jayden, and their dog ‘Mr Woods’.

Caryl Hart is an award-winning children’s author who writes picture books and young fiction. She runs creative literacy workshops for schools, libraries, communities and festivals. The Girl who Planted Trees won Teach Early Years Best Picture Book Award 2022 and was chosen as one of the best books of 2022 by the Children’s Laureate, Joseph Coelho.

Meet the Oceans was one of Waterstones’ Best Books for Babies & Toddlers 2021 and Books for Topics’ Best EYFS Curriculum Support 2021, and Girls Can Do Anything was shortlisted for the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award 2019.

Her best-selling Princess series has sold over a quarter of a million copies, and her books are published in numerous languages all over the world.

Caryl lives in Sheffield with her family and loves walking in the hills, cycling and wild swimming.

Since early childhood, Anastasia has been drawing, dreaming and inventing stories. She is very fond of reading and travelling, as well as plants and flowers. Now, after graduating from the Academy of Arts, she tries to learn about shape and colour, lightness and movement from nature. Anastasia makes illustrations for books, magazines and games. Books are her greatest love because they are doors that open up new magical and wonderful worlds. She creates most of her illustrations in digital art, trying to bring the feeling and warmth of traditional materials into them.
She is the 2018 winner of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Silent Book Contest.

Katrina has spent her life surrounded by books ever since her first visit to the library when she was tiny. She now lives in a house full of bookshelves fit to bursting, and continues to fill them with books that she has written.

She recently won Booktrust’s Story Time prize for her and Nick Sharratt’s picture book The Whales on the Bus.

When she’s not writing for children, she is cuddled up with one of her fluffy cats and a good book, or plucking cat hairs off her clothes.

Guilherme lives in Blumenau, in southern Brazil. In 2010, he won a national contest for new children’s book illustrators and has been working with editorial illustrations ever since. After illustrating many books for other authors, Guilherme started writing his own books in 2017. Guilherme’s work has been published worldwide and has received various accolades, including the Jabuti Award and the Golden Pinwheel Grand Award. Guilherme continues to seek ways to entertain and delight children through his art and stories.

Em Lynas is a children’s author with a love of silly poetry and nonsense rhymes. Em has been a primary school teacher and an educational publisher and is now an author of funny picture books. Her book, The Goat and the Stoat and the Goat, was shortlisted for the 2025 Laugh Out Loud Award. She lives by the seaside on the North East coast with her husband, Geoff, and although she did have pets when her children lived at home; hamsters, guinea pigs, a rabbit and a jar of stick insects, she is currently petless.

Louise lives and works in the UK. When she isn’t writing, she works as a freelance acting, life skills and performing arts tutor, teaching students of all ages, abilities and backgrounds.

Tom Froese is an award winning illustrator and teacher. He is passionate about making work that makes people happy. In his work, you will experience a flurry of joyful colours, spontaneous textures and quirky shapes.

As a commercial artist, Tom has worked for brands and businesses all over the world, including Yahoo!, Airbnb, and GQ France. The Castle the King Built is Tom’s second published picture book, the first being Whose Boat? by Toni Buzzeo (Abrams Appleseed, 2018).

Originally from the Toronto area, Tom graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design with a B.Des (honours) in 2009. He then moved to Vancouver, BC, where he began his creative career and eventually became a family man.

Tom now works from his home studio in the small village of Yarrow, about an hour’s drive east of Vancouver. He lives with his wife Amanda and daughters Nina and Marie – and a funny cat named Blueberry.