Rishi Dastidar is a poet whose work has been published by the Financial Times, New Scientist and the BBC, amongst many others. His third collection, Neptune’s Projects (Nine Arches Press), was longlisted for the Laurel Prize and a poem from it was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. He is also editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century (Nine Arches Press), and co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair). He reviews poetry for The Guardian and is chair of Wasafiri, the leading magazine of international contemporary writing.

Maz Evans’ bestselling books for children include the Who Let the Gods Out?, Vi Spy and Scarlett Fife series, which have collectively received over 30 award nominations, including the Carnegie Medal, Branford Boase and Waterstone’s Children’s Book of the Year. Her debut adult novel, Over My Dead Body came out with Headline in 2023. As a TV journalist, she writes for The Daily Telegraph and TV Times and she regularly broadcasts on BBC R2. Her original musical H R Haitch (with composer Luke Bateman) was produced at the Union Theatre, London in 2018. She won the Iris Theatre songwriting award three years in succession (with Luke Bateman).

Emma Finn is an agent at C&W with a growing list of writers of both fiction and narrative non-fiction. In fiction, she loves gripping thrillers and ambitious, character-driven mystery or suspense with a fresh hook, angle or setting and is drawn to sharply observed knotty novels about families and relationships. In non-fiction she loves to see big ideas books that help us to think about the world today, alternative histories, psychology, anthropology and popular science, memoir, great food writing and genre-blending narrative non-fiction that fuses the author's interests and expertise. Her authors include Aniefiok Ekpoudom, Ellery Lloyd, Cassie Werber and Claire Lynch.

Lucy Luck was an assistant at Rogers, Coleridge & White before setting up her own agency in 2006. In 2014 she joined Aitken Alexander Associates and in 2016 moved to C&W. Her authors have been listed for and awarded numerous prizes including the Booker Prize, the Costa Novel Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, the EFG Sunday Times Short Story Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Encore Award. She is susceptible to a beautifully crafted short story and, in fiction and non-fiction, looks for worlds that have complexity and texture and a voice that is of itself. Her authors include Catherine O’Flynn, Kevin Barry, Sheena Patel, Andrew Michael Hurley and Douglas Stuart.

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose novel, Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her journalism has been featured in The New York Times, the Guardian and the Huffington Post and she has also judged various literary prizes, including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award and the Women's Prize for Fiction. Director and founder of Black to the Future festival and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021. Her new novel Curandera is published by Dialogue Books.

Johny Pitts is a writer, photographer and broadcaster. He is the founder of the online journal Afropean.com and author of Afropean: Notes from Black Europe, Home is Not a Place with Roger Robinson and Visibility for the Tate. He has contributed words and images for the Guardian, New Statesman, New York Times and Condé Nast Traveller. He was previously co-host of Open Book for BBC R4 and he is the creator and host of the Afropean podcast, funded by National Geographical Society. He has received the Jhalak Prize, the Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing, the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding and the European Essay Prize.

Benjamin Ross is a Golden Globe winning and Emmy nominated film director and screenwriter whose work includes The Young Poisoner's Handbook, RKO281, Poppy Shakespeare, The Frankenstein Chronicles and most recently Testament, the Story of Moses for Netflix. Current projects include film adaptations of The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather, They Went Left by Monica Hesse and two return series, one on the life of St Paul and the other based on events and characters during the English Civil War.

Chris Thorpe is a writer and performer from Manchester whose work includes Status and Confirmation, both with Rachel Chavkin and China Plate, Victory Condition and Always Maybe The Last Time for the Royal Court, The Mysteries with Sam Pritchard and the Royal Exchange, Manchester, The Shape of the Pain with Rachel Bagshaw and China Plate and The Oh Fuck Moment with Hannah Jane Walker. Current work looks at the construction of cultural hierarchies and Iranian pop music in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World with Javaad Alipoor and nuclear disarmament and diplomacy in A Family Business and Talking About the Fire with Staatstheater Mainz and China Plate.