Naomi Wood is a British novelist and short story writer, best known for her historical fiction and explorations of contemporary womanhood. She is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Wood's debut novel, The Godless Boys (2011), presents a dystopian narrative set in an alternate England. Her second novel, Mrs. Hemingway (2014), delves into the lives of Ernest Hemingway's four wives and won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her third novel, The Hiding Game (2019), is set in the Bauhaus art school during the 1920s and was shortlisted for the HWA Gold Crown Award.

In 2023, Wood won the BBC National Short Story Award for "Comorbidities," a piece featured in her debut short story collection, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things (2024). Her short stories often examine themes of motherhood, mental health, and the complexities of modern relationships.

Wood studied English literature at the University of Cambridge and earned both her MA and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She lives in Norwich with her family.

Sharlene Teo is a Singaporean author known for her richly atmospheric and psychologically nuanced fiction. Her debut novel, Ponti (2018), won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award and was shortlisted for several major prizes, including the Hearst Big Book Award and the Edward Stanford Fiction Award. Ponti has been translated into multiple languages and was widely praised for its lyrical prose and haunting exploration of female friendship, myth, and memory set against the backdrop of a humid, decaying Singapore.

Teo holds degrees in law and creative writing from the University of Warwick and the University of East Anglia, where she was awarded the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship. In addition to her fiction, her essays, reviews, and short stories have appeared in Granta, The White Review, Wasafiri, LitHub, and others. She has been a fellow at the Royal Society of Literature and continues to engage with themes of identity, displacement, and the strange beauty of Southeast Asian modernity in her writing.