Lucy Hawking read French and Russian at the University of Oxford before becoming a journalist and novelist. She is author of two adult novels Jaded (2004) and Run for Your Life (2005). Her latest book George’s Secret Key to the Universe (2007) is a collaboration with her father Professor Stephen Hawking.

Nikki Gamble discussed George's Secret Key ...

Philip Caveney was born in Prestatyn, North Wales. His father worked for the RAF and so Philip’s childhood was characterised by movement from one military base to another. This sense of movement, change, adventure and possibility is central to his first series of children’s books ‘Sebastian Darke’.

Featuring the mishaps and madcap ...

Tim Bowler was born in Leigh-on-Sea in 1953. He is the Carnegie Medal winning writer of teenage and young adult novels including River Boy, (1997) a story about love and bereavement, Starseeker (2002), a mystical exploration of love, loss and music, also made into a play; Apocalypse (2004), an allegory about the future of mankind; and Frozen ...

David Fickling is an innovative children's book editor and publisher of David Fickling Books. His recent publications include Siobhan Dowd’s A Swift Pure Cry and The London Eye Mystery and Bog child; Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas; Jenny Downham&rsquo ...

At the recent grand launch of the DFC, Seattle-born illustrator Sarah McIntyre was sparkling with all her usual enthusiasm. She has been commissioned by David Fickling to produce at least a year’s worth of original episodes for the ground-breaking new weekly children’s comic, and those who meet her and see her work are left in no doubt that a new star has burst onto the illustratio ...

Frances Hardinge was born and grew up in Kent, England. From the age of four she dreamed about being a writer. Frances studied at Oxford University and was the founder member of a writers’ workshop there. Her writing career was launched after she won a short story competition. Shortly after winning she wrote Fly by Night  which won the Branford Boase Award.

On Friday ...

Berlie Doherty was born in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, on 6 November 1943. Educated at Upton Hall Convent School, she read English at the University of Durham, graduating. After university Berlie worked as a social worker, a teacher and a schools broadcaster for BBC Radio, before becoming a full-time writer. She has travelled extensively in America, Australia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East speak ...

Susan Cooper was born in 1935, in Burnham, Buckinghamshire where she lived until she was 21 andher parents moved to her grandmother's village of Aberdovey, Wales. After leaving Slough High School she gained a place at Oxford where she read English. She is the highly accalimed author of The Dark is Rising sequence as well as novels for adults and children, ...