Elizabeth Laird is a multi-award winning novelist, who has lived and worked in many parts of the world. She is married to the writer David McDowall.
Elizabeth's novels explore contemporary issues, some set in the UK and others in Kurdistan, Ethiopia, Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan and Jordan. She has written many picture books for younger children as well as retellings of folk tales. Her books have been translated into over 25 languages.
Elizabeth has travelled all over Ethiopia collecting folk stories, and helped to set up the Ethiopian Story Collecting Project. You can read some of the stories on www.ethiopianfolktalesforkids.com.
You can find out more about Elizabeth at www.elizabethlaird.co.uk.

Author of the irreverant alternative guide to Politics - Politics

Chris Riddell is one of the country's finest children's book illustrators, and was Children's Laureate from 2015-17. He has won the Kate Greenaway Medal three times - for Pirate Diary, Gulliver's Travels and The Sleeper and the Spindle. He is a political cartoonist for the Observer and has collaborated with Paul Stewart on the extremely popular Edge Chronicles and Muddle Earth series. In recent years he has had success writing and illustrating his own books, including the Ottoline stories and Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse, which won a Costa Book Award - and he illustrated J.K. Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard.