Susie Dent is a writer and broadcaster on language. She recently celebrated 25 years as the resident word expert on C4's Countdown and also appears on the show's comedy sister 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown. She has written for the Independent on Sunday, the Telegraph, and the Times, and is the author of several books, including her latest, Dent's Modern Tribes. She is a spokesperson for Oxford University Press and has been a judge on the Costa Book Awards and on the Academy Excellence Awards. Susie regularly delivers key-note speeches to both small companies and major corporations on language and communication.

Harriet Hobday is an extraordinary new talent, a recent graduate of the MA Children's Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. Currently based in Edinburgh, she was highly commended in the Macmillan Prize 2015 and runner-up for The Batsford Prize 2018.