J.K. Rowling is the author of the enduringly popular Harry Potter books. After the idea for Harry Potter came to her on a delayed train journey in 1990, she plotted out and started writing the series of seven books and the first, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in the UK in 1997. The series took another ten years to complete, concluding in 2007 with the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The Harry Potter books have now sold over 600 million copies in 85 languages, been listened to as audiobooks for over one billion hours and made into eight smash hit movies. To accompany the series, J.K. Rowling wrote three short companion volumes for charity: Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in aid of Comic Relief and Lumos, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard, in aid of Lumos. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them went on to inspire a new series of films featuring Magizoologist Newt Scamander. Harry's story as a grown-up was continued in a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which J.K. Rowling wrote with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany, and which is now playing in multiple locations around the world. She is also the author of a bestselling crime fiction series, and two stand-alone children's novels, The Ickabog and The Christmas Pig. J.K. Rowling has received many awards and honours for her writing, including the OBE and Companion of Honour, and a Blue Peter Gold Badge. She supports a wide number of humanitarian causes through Volant and is the founder of the international children's care reform charity Lumos. J.K. Rowling lives in Scotland with her family. To find out more about J.K. Rowling visit jkrowlingstories.com.

Andrew Wilson is a novelist, biographer and journalist. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Biography (2004) and the LAMBDA Literary Award (2003) for Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. He was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Prize (2003) for the same book. His non-fiction books also include biographies of Sylvia Plath, Alexander McQueen, Harold Robbins and a group biography of the survivors of the Titanic. His first novel, The Lying Tongue, published in 2007, was shortlisted for the Jelf First Novel Award. He is the author of four novels which feature Agatha Christie as a detective. Writing under the pseudonym of E.V. Adamson, he is the author of the psychological thriller Five Strangers. He is also a creative writing mentor on the Gold Dust scheme and the new tutor on the Faber Academy crime course.