Nicholas Allan is the author/illustrator of over thirty children’s books. Nicholas is also The Isle of Wight Literary Festival Schools' Patron. Many of his books are bestsellers, including The Queen’s Knickers, Father Christmas Needs a Wee, Jesus’ Christmas Party, Cinderella’s Bum, Heaven, and Where Willy Went.

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His books have won awards and been translated into twenty languages.

www.nicholasallan.co.uk

M.A. Bennett was born in the north of England to an English mother and a Venetian father. She loved history so much she studied it at two different universities. She also studied art and worked as an illustrator, an actress and a film reviewer. Now she has her dream job of being a writer and her books have been translated into more than 20 languages.  She also designed tour visuals for rock bands, including U2 and the Rolling Stones. Her first YA novel, S.T.A.G.S., was published in 2017 and was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize 2018.

Her bestselling S.T.A.G.S. is a twisty young adults thriller. MA BENNETT's bestselling STAGS series (STAGS, DOGS, FOXES and now TIGERS) - which is being developed for film - follows scholarship girl Greer to an exclusive boarding school where she discovers the Medievals, the dangerous and seductive clique who really run STAGS.

Against a backdrop of weekend retreats, bloodsports and Renaissance theatre, the STAGS books ooze atmosphere and menace. While DOGS draws on the discovery of a forbidden Elizabethan play, FOXES has sinister echoes of a Jacobean plot woven into its modern-day setting. In TIGERS, we move to colonial India and the terrible tiger hunts of the past.

Costa Award-winning children’s author Jasbinder Bilan was born on a farm in the foothills of the Himalayas. Her mum told her she was born in the stables, much to the rest of her family’s delight.  

When Jasbinder was one and a half her family moved to Nottingham, England where she grew up.  It was a big adjustment for them and they kept India alive by telling funny stories of their life on their farm with the grumpy camel and the mischievous monkey.   

In Jasbinder’s writing she creates magical and real worlds and tells gripping adventures inspired by her love of family and home, and of cities and wild places across the UK and India. 

Her debut children’s novel Asha And The Spirit Bird won the Times/Chicken House Prize, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal, longlisted for the Jhalak Prize, shortlisted for the Waterstones Book Prize and won the Costa Children’s Book Award. Her second novel Tamarind And The Star Of Ishta was longlisted for the Blue Peter Book Prize and won the Indie Children's Book Award.  India, Incredible India was shortlisted in the Younger Non-Fiction category of the inaugural The Week Junior Book Awards.

www.jasbinderbilan.co.uk

Lil Chase has a first class degree in Creative Writing from London Metropolitan University and works as an Editor in London.

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Having been a pub cook and even suffered a brief stint in Disneyland Paris, she settled on a career in her first love - telling stories.

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Boys For Beginners started its life as a novel, written in pencil, complete with drawings, when Lil was just 11. Her writing has improved since then but her spelling has not. Lil has published 13 books. 

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Lil lives with Stella - a fox crossed with a rat, who masquerades as a dog.

Tracey Corderoy is a multi-award-winning British children's writer. She has published 76 books since 2010. Tracey grew up in South Wales, on a council estate firmly sandwiched between the steel and chemical works.

She’s a trained teacher, but now writes full time in an old damp cottage in a valley in the woods.

Her passion for nosing into other people’s ‘stories’ began in early childhood, thanks to an ancient set of encyclopaedias and a Ladybird copy of Cinderella.

Then one special teacher and many great librarians fed Tracey more and more books. Between their pages real magic started to happen. Impossible became plausible. Characters became friends. Boundaries became gates as slowly her world opened up. Books made her laugh, and cry, and think. They made her feel that maybe she could do things…

www.traceycorderoy.com

175 years ago, Charles Dickens and his family spent three summer months on the Isle of Wight. While here, he was writing chapters of David Copperfield - his most autobiographical of novels. 

Ian Charles Dickens is a great-great grandson (and an Island resident) and has been bringing his illustrated talk on the rags to riches tale of Dickens’s life, to numerous Primary school classes across this anniversary year. 

Simon Howes lives in Fishbourne on the Isle of Wight. He is a retired stockbroker and happily married with three children. 

In his 68th year against all the odds he rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, solo and completely unassisted from Europe to St. Lucia, a distance of over 5,300 kilometres. In the process Simon raised over £100,000 for the Isle of Wight Red Squirrel Trust without any corporate sponsorship.  He broke the record for a transatlantic solo row to St Lucia by 43 days. Simon also became the second oldest independent solo rower in history to row across any ocean on the planet.

Phillip is an author, playwright, poet, illustrator and screenwriter. In my day job I work on Sustainability, helping decarbonise world-wide supply chains. I also volunteer both in the writing community, as a key member of SCBWI, and my local community as a Scout Leader.

His book, Microraptor, is a fast-paced and funny adventure with an environmental twist, the first instalment of Kavvadias' exhilarating series sees two schoolchildren bring a microraptor back from extinction in the Alps.

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www.philipkavvadias.com

The Right Honourable Stuart Lawrence is a consultant, youth engagement specialist, coach and public speaker. He is also the younger brother of Stephen Lawrence, the British teenager murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993.

Stuart has worked in graphics and design and has had a 15-year career as a secondary school teacher in southwest London. He has also worked for the Home Office and HMP Belmarsh.

Silence is Not an Option is Stuart’s first book (for readers aged 10 +) and is interspersed with reflections on his bother Stephen’s life and murder. Stuart talks about what he has learned from life and the tools that have helped him live positively and kept him moving forwards when times have been tough. From role models to self-control, failure to imagination, Stuart’s aim with this book is to use his own experience to help young people – to help all people – harness the good in themselves and in the world around them, using that fire of positivity to create change in their lives.

Stuart campaigns for racism awareness and devotes time to the promotion of Stephen Lawrence Day, on 22 April annually.

www.stuartalawrence.co.uk

Born in Chichester and now based on the south coast with his family, multi award-winning author and Illustrator Neal Layton works on a plethora of publications for children from his treasure filled studio on the Isle of Wight. 

A former student at Newcastle and Central St Martins, Neal has become an avid collector and compulsive scribbler, deftly combining a multitude of styles and techniques in colour and black and white, from pen and ink to collage and digital methods creating fresh and spontaneous illustrations for both fiction, non-fiction and novelty books.

With a clutch of awards under his belt including the prestigious Sheffield Children’s Book Prize Neal has been lucky enough to collaborate with some of the country’s best loved authors including Cressida Cowell, Andy Stanton and Michael Rosen. Neal is extremely passionate about conservation and inclusivity and this shines through in many of his recent author illustrated publications.

Well versed in discussing and demonstrating his work Neal is available for a variety of events from schools and bookshops to large scale festivals and conferences. You can find Neal on Instagram and Twitter for insightful sneak peeks, reviews and regular updates on new projects. 

The Tree. Home to a family of birds in their nest, squirrels in their drey and rabbits in their burrow. But what happens to the animals when a man and woman decide to cut it down and use it for their dream house? Can the tree be home to both the animals and the humans? A simple yet fun and distinctive picture book, with a strong environmental message about the importance of respecting animal habitats.

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www.neallayton.co.uk

I have always loved reading and I studied English at university just so that I could read a bit more.  Next I found my way into secondary teaching and discovered that I loved it too: I got to read more books, show off and hang out with very funny teenagers.  What a great job!

Teaching English also encouraged me to write.  Soon I had planned and started lots of different stories, but they were all abandoned and shoved to the back of a drawer.  Then, one day, the plot for Flirty Dancing came together; Bea’s story was so alive it was like a film running in my head and I knew it was a story I would finish.

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Over the next few years, various exciting events distracted me from Flirty Dancing: I got married, travelled the world, was chased by an angry elephant (and a pack of dogs) and I had two babies.  While I was sitting on trains, swimming in the Outback and raising two crazy girls, I kept thinking about Bea, and her friends, Betty, Kat and Pearl, until I realised I had planned three more books.

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In 2013, after attending the Winchester Writers’ Festival, I plucked up the courage to send Flirty Dancing to Julia Churchill, a brilliant children’s fiction agent at A.M. Heath.  With dazzling speed I was then signed by Bloomsbury to write the four books in the series.

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www.jennymclachlan.com

Peter J Murray was born in 1951 and brought up on a council estate in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. He left school with few qualifications, feeling ill-suited to an academic lifestyle, and followed in the family tradition of working in the hazardous steel works of Sheffield. What happened over the next 30 years is an amazing story...

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Peter has always been a story-teller and a practical joker. Entertaining pupils with stories of spooky characters and unusual happenings was the ideal breeding ground for the creation of many of the characters who appear in Pete's current novels.

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www.peterjmurray.co.uk

Zohra was born in 1998, and grew up inventing stories for her two younger sisters. She studied law at Cambridge and Oxford universities, but secretly dreamed of being an author. Now she lives in London, browsing bookshops and writing magical adventures. The Kingdom Over the Sea is her first book.

Christopher Stevens began telling stories to his children and their friends more that 25 years ago and is never more complimented than when they are retold to him by these ‘children’, now in their twenties. His sense of adventure combined with this interest in history and passion for storytelling have culminated in him writing his children’s novels, ‘The Pirate Queen and Half-Plucked Chicken’ and ‘The Lost Uncle and the Elixir of Life’. Chris lives in Cowes on the Isle of Wight. 

Chris will be sharing ‘The Lost Uncle and the Elixir of Life’- When they stumble across a one-hundred-year-old journal detailing the disappearance of their Uncle Cecil, the Baldwin family set off for Sri Lanka in search of the truth. Has he gone in search of the butterfly flower with its magical healing powers? As the trail goes cold, so fate lends a helping hand, and what they discover is a land beyond their wildest dreams. But when things go horribly wrong, Charlie and Lizzie need to draw on all their courage; the fate of an entire civilization lies in their hands!

In my former lives I’ve been an Olympian, triple Commonwealth fencing gold medallist, Oxford English graduate and award-winning executive creative director in advertising.

Now I’m a children’s author, following my wildest dream of all . . .

My first book draws on my experiences in fencing and film sets: Sister To A Star is a thrilling mystery about warring twins in a swash-buckling Hollywood movie.

My second book uses my understanding of high-level sport: Winner Takes Gold is a gripping adventure about sabotage on an elite gymnastics camp. 

In my spare time I relax by skiing, climbing, running and yoga. All while raising two boys who bring me more joy than all my dreams put together. 

www.eloisesmith.net

Andy Stanton lives in North London. He studied English at Oxford but they kicked him out. He has been a film script reader, a cartoonist, an NHS lackey and lots of other things. He has many interests, but best of all he likes cartoons, books and music (even jazz).

One day he’d like to live in New York or Berlin or one of those places because he’s got fantasies of bohemia. His favourite expression is ‘Good evening’ and his favourite word is ‘captain’. Andy has now written more than one book, but less than twenty.

Mr Gum is a truly nasty old man. He’s absolutely grimsters. But this book’s not just about him. There’s also a little girl called Polly, an absolute winner called Friday O’Leary, an evil butcher, heroes and sweets and stuff, and a furry wobbler of a dog called Jake WHO MUST BE SAVED FROM TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE EVIL. Oh yes, it’s all happening in this book.

www.mrgum.co.uk

Comic writer and artist Kev F Sutherland's work has appeared everywhere from Beano to Marvel (and most points inbetween). 

He began his career working on the kids comic Oink! and with strips in Viz. He was a leading light of the 90s humour comics scene, working for Gas, The Damage, Zit, Blag and others, and creating and editing UT and Bloody Hell. He devised and drew The Gladiators TV spin off comic, then worked on such titles as Red Dwarf Smegazine and Zig & Zag's Zogazine.

For Marvel he worked as an artist on Doctor Strange, Star Trek, Ghost Rider 2099, and Apocalypse 2099, and wrote Werewolf By Night. From 1999 - 2004 he was the producer of the UK's Comic Festival in Bristol.

Since 2003 he has been a regular contributor, both writing and drawing, for Beano comic and the Beano and Dandy annuals, and has adapted a series of stories for Bible Society.

His debut graphic novels, Findlay Macbeth, The Prince Of Denmark Street, and The Midsummer Night's Dream Team were published in 2020.

www.kevfcomicartist.com

Yarrow Townsend spent her childhood among the moss, oak and heather of the New Forest. After working as a teacher, and then as a stablehand, Yarrow completed an MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University, before returning to the forest to work for the RSPB. Always in search of ways to be closer to the outdoors, Yarrow now lives on a narrowboat, travelling the canals with her garden on the roof. The Map of Leaves is inspired by her life by the woods and the water, and by her own parents’ herb books.

In her publication The Map of Leaves, Orla has been on her own since Ma died, living in a woodshed by the river, with only her beloved garden for company.

It provides all she needs. But when sickness come to the land, Governor Atlas decrees that plants are the cause, and must be destroyed. 

Armed with her mother's book of remedies, Orla steals away on a river boat, setting off to discover the truth and save her garden. But she's not the only stowaway. Soon she, Idris and Ariana must navigate the rapids of the Inkwater to a poisonous place from which they may never return....