David Almond is the author of Skellig, My Name is Mina, Heaven Eyes, Kit's Wilderness, A Song for Ella Grey and many other novels, stories, picture books, opera librettos, songs and plays. His major awards include the Carnegie Medal, two Whitbread Awards, the Eleanor Farjeon Award and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. In 2010, he won the Ham Christian Andersen Award, the world's most prestigious prize for children's authors.
He lives in Newcastle, the city in which he was born. In 2021, David was awarded an OBE for services to literature. Kirsti Beautyman is an illustrator and children's book author based in Newcastle upon Tyne.You'll often find her in her small cosy studio, with her feet on a portable radiator, clutching a mug of hot Ribena while she works on her latest projects. She graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2016 and was awarded 'Picture Hooks Illustrator of the Year' in 2017.
Recently Kirsti has turned to working digitally, but her illustrations still always begin as a loose pencil sketch in one of many battered sketchbooks.