Madeleine is currently working on a non-fiction title for Granta, Seaside, England’s Love Affair, and a new novel set in North Yorkshire. For twenty five years, Madeleine was a journalist and Associate Editor on the Guardian and held a number of positions including columnist 1999-2012. She wrote on a wide range of subjects including politics, social affairs, faith and global development. She was made a Visiting Professor at the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute in 2021. She has received a number of awards and prizes including an honorary fellowship from Cardiff University in 2013, a visiting fellowship at Manchester University (2016-19). Love of Country was shortlisted for the Wainright and the Saltire Prizes 2017, and she won the Portico Prize for The Plot in 2010 which was also shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. Her first novel, Island Song, won the Waverton Good Read Award in 2020. She was awarded a Lambeth MA degree in 2006, The Race in the Media award in 2005 and the Imam wa Amal Special Award in 2002. She has won several One World Media awards for her journalism on global justice.

She was born in Oswaldkirk, North Yorkshire, one of five children of artist parents. She studied history at Corpus Christi, Cambridge and won a scholarship to Harvard. She now lives near Stroud.

Oliver Burkeman is the author of the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller Four Thousand Weeks, about embracing limitation and finally getting round to what counts, along with The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking and Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done. For many years he wrote a popular column for the Guardian, ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’. In his email newsletter The Imperfectionist, he writes about productivity, mortality, the power of limits and building a meaningful life in an age of distraction. He lives in the North York Moors.

Minna Salami is a Nigerian-Finnish and Swedish author and social critic who grew up in Lagos and has lived in Sweden, New York and London. She studied Political Science at the University of Lund in Sweden, and then Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London where she was awarded a distinction for her specialisation in African feminist theory. In 2010 she launched her multiple award-winning blog MsAfropolitan which has drawn over a million readers. Her debut book SENSUOUS KNOWLEDGE (Bloomsbury/Zed, UK) and (Harper Collins/Amistad, US) has been translated into multiple languages.

She is a frequently sought essayist and her bylines include the Guardian, CNN, Independent, Al Jazeera, World Literature Now and the Royal Society of the Arts. As a keynote speaker and lecturer, Minna has spoken at over 300 universities, cultural events, and conferences, on five continents including at some of the world’s most prominent institutions such as the Oxford Union, Yale University, and the Singularity University at NASA.

Minna has consulted governments on feminism and gender equality, and she sits on the boards of The African Feminist Initiative at Pennsylvania State University, The Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Sahel, and the Emerge network. She has served as a judge for the One World Media awards, a nominator for the Prince Claus Foundation and the Princess of Asturias Foundation. She holds an Honorary Fellowship in Writing from The Hong Kong Baptist University.

Alastair McIntosh has been described by BBC TV as “one of the world’s leading environmental campaigners.” A pioneer of modern land reform in Scotland, he helped bring the Isle of Eigg into community ownership. On the Isle of Harris he negotiated withdrawal of the world’s biggest cement company (Lafarge) from a devastating “superquarry” plan. He then served, unpaid to avoid conflicts of interest, on the company’s Sustainability Stakeholders Panel for 10 years to help further corporate social and environmental responsibility.

Alastair guest lectures on nonviolence at military staff colleges including,for over two decades, on some of the UK Defence Academy’s most senior courses. His books include Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power (Aurum), Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service (Green Books), Poacher’s Pilgrimage: an Island Journey (Birlinn 2016, Cascade USA 2018) and Riders on the Storm (Birlinn 2020) which was long-listed for the Wainwright Prize in Global Conservation 2021. A Quaker with an interfaith outlook, focusing much of his work around spirituality, he lives in Glasgow with his wife, Véréne Nicolas. There he is a founding trustee of the GalGael Trust which works with with poverty, community and human potential, and an honorary professor in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His website is www.AlastairMcIntosh.com and Twitter @alastairmci.