N.M. Kelby

N.M. Kelby worked as a journalist, editor and educator before turning her hand to fiction. She is the critically acclaimed author of In the Company of Angels, Whale Season and the Florida Book Award-winner A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts. Her books have been translated into several languages.

Read an interview with N.M. Kelby here

Sherwood Anderson

The son of a day labourer, Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941), spent his youth and early adulthood working in various jobs across the Midwest, before devoting himself to fiction. He went on to become one of the most influential writers of the early twentieth century, notably for his short stories.

Susan Coolidge

Susan Coolidge was the pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905), an American children’s author who resided for most of her life in New England. She is best known for the classic children’s novel What Katy Did, in which the fictional Carr family was modelled after her own.

Robert Chesshyre

Robert Chesshyre is a freelance writer and journalist who lives in south-west London. He worked for the Observer for twenty years, wrote full-time for the Telegraph Magazine, and more recently has contributed to the Sunday Times Magazine, the Independent, the Times, the Guardian and the Literary Review.

Raymond Queneau

Raymond Queneau (1903–76) was a poet, novelist, editor, scholar and mathematician. He is best remembered for Exercises in Style and Zazie in the Metro.

Thomas More

As a philosopher, author, statesman and humanist, Thomas More (1478–1535) was one of the most influential figures of the English Renaissance. He was a councillor to Henry VIII, who famously ordered his execution, and is venerated as a saint in Catholicism. More’s Utopia is considered one of the most influential philosophical works of all time.

Ada Parellada

Ada Parellada was born in Granollers (Barcelona). Her parents did not want her to work in restaurant industry, so she started to study law. However, her passion for food led her to find her way into every kitchen until finally, together with her husband, she opened the innovative restaurant Semproniana in Barcelona, as well as the restaurants Coses de Menjar, also in Barcelona, and Acontecimiento, in Lisbon. Ada Parellada collaborates with different media and local Catalan television channels. She has written several cookery books, and Vanilla Salt is her first novel.

Read an interview with Ada Parellada here

Dante Alighieri

Born in Florence, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is considered to be the father of Italian poetry and one of the greatest influences in world literature. His masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is the zenith of medieval knowledge and a paragon of poetic imagination. Its first part, the Inferno, remains one of the most popular books of all time.

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev (1818–83) was a novelist, poet and dramatist, and now ranks as one of the towering figures of Russian literature. His masterpiece, Fathers and Children, is considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

Lucian

Lucian of Samosata was a Greek rhetorician and satirist who flourished in the second century AD. Among the works attributed to him, the most famous are True History, Lucius, or the Ass and The Dream.