The Gifts of Reading

Robert Macfarlane won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for his first book, Mountains of the Mind (2003). His second, The Wild Places (2007), was similarly celebrated, winning three prizes and being shortlisted for six more. Both books were adapted for television by the BBC. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Candice Carty-Williams was born and raised in south London, by way of Jamaica. She is a novelist, showrunner, culture writer, and author of Book of the Year Award winning and Sunday Times bestselling Queenie, as well as the young adult novella Empress and Aniya, and the Sunday Times bestselling People Person. She adapted Queenie for Channel 4 and Hulu in 2024, and wrote and showran original drama, Champion, for Netflix and BBC One in 2023.

In 2016, Candice created and launched the Guardian and 4th Estate 4thWrite Prize for underrepresented writers, the first inclusive initiative of its kind in book publishing. Candice is the ex Guardian Review books columnist, has interviewed and written for i-D, Vogue, The Face, the Sunday Times, BEAT Magazine, Black Ballad and many more publications.

Chigozie Obioma is winner of the inaugural Financial Times/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Award for Fiction; the NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author; the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction [Los Angeles Times Book Prizes]; it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, as well as for several other prizes in the UK and US. Obioma was named one of Foreign Policy magazine's 100 Leading Global Thinkers.

Jan Morris (1926-2020) lived and wrote as James Morris until 1972. She resided with her partner, Elizabeth Morris, in northwest Wales, between the mountains and the sea. Her many books included In My Mind’s Eye, Coronation Everest, and the Pax Britannica trilogy.

Sisonke Msimang writes
about race, gender and power. She is the author of two books - Always
Another Country and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela - and has
been published widely including in The New York Times, the Washington Post,
Laphams Quarterly and a range of other publications. Sisonke is also the voice behind Ms
Understanding, a regular column in The Guardian that deals with
everyday racism.

David Pilling is a self-employed author and historian based in West Wales, where he was raised on a smallholding. As a child he acquired a love for the Welsh countryside and Welsh history, especially the medieval era. His particular interests lie in the Edwardian wars of the late 13th century.

Alice Pung OAM is an award-winning writer based in Melbourne. She is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, and the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, One Hundred Days was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and Voss literary prizes and longlisted for an ABIA Award in the category of Literary Fiction. Alice was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022.

Jancis Robinson is a Master of Wine, the Financial Times wine writer, and the author/editor of dozens of wine books, including The Oxford Companion to Wine and The World Atlas of Wine. Her award-winning website, www.JancisRobinson.com, has subscribers in more than 100 countries.

Salley Vickers’ subtle, witty style and clear-eyed observation of human nature has been compared to Penelope Fitzgerald and Barbara Pym. She has worked as a university teacher of literature, specialising in Shakespeare, and in adult education, where she specialised in the literature of the ancient world. She is a trained analytical psychologist and lectures widely on the connections between literature, psychology and religion. She divides her time between London, Venice and the West Country.