London Library Lit Fest: Science & Miscellaneous 5x15

Inua Ellams is a Nigerian-born, UK-based poet, playwright, performer, graphic artist and designer who has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the BBC. His published books of poetry include Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales, #Afterhours, The Half-God of Rainfall and, recently, The Actual, his first full collection. His first play The 14th Tale was awarded a Fringe First at the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival and his fourth Barber Shop Chronicles sold out two runs at England’s National Theatre.

Danny Leigh is the film critic of the Financial Times. As a journalist, he has written for the FT since 2012 and The Guardian since 1997, with a focus on the meeting points of film, culture and politics. He has also worked as a broadcaster, co-hosting BBC One's long-running Film show for seven years, and making TV and radio documentaries on subjects from boxing movies to the career of David Lynch to class in modern Britain. In the 2000s, he also wrote two novels published by Faber. He is now writing a third.

Philip Norman joined the Sunday Times at the age of twenty-two, soon gaining a reputation for his profiles of figures such as Elizabeth Taylor, P. G. Wodehouse and Colonel Gaddafi. Shout! his ground-breaking biography of the Beatles, was an international bestseller and he has written the definitive lives of Sir Elton John, Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. His latest book is a memoir, We Danced On Our Desks: Brilliance and backstabbing at the Sixties' most influential magazine.

Kate Summerscale was working on the obituaries desk at the Daily Telegraph when she came across the inspiration for her first book. She later went on to develop a
ground-breaking new form of narrative non-fiction writing which culminated in her
number-one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson
Prize for Non-Fiction 2008 and later adapted into an ITV drama starring Peter Capaldi.
She began writing her new book The Peepshow in the spring of 2021, soon after the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard. She hoped that a case from the past might help her understand why a man might choose to kill women – and why we are so fascinated by such stories. Summerscale has published five previous books with Bloomsbury. To date her books have sold more than 600,000 copies in the UK.

Margy Kinmonth is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her recent film Eric Ravilious – Drawn To War played in cinemas across the UK and features Alan Bennett, Grayson Perry, Ai Weiwei and Robert Macfarlane. Other films include Looking For Lowry with Ian McKellen, the BAFTA nominated War Art with Eddie Redmayne and Naked Hollywood, winner of the BAFTA for Best Documentary Series. She is currently making a film about women war artists.