Lewis Crofts, born in 1977, grew up in southern England near Bristol, where he cut his head open a prodigious seven times before the age of 12. At 18 he went to Oxford University, where he studied French and German literature, specialising in the medieval stuff about dragons, princesses and dwarves. A couple of years in Germany were followed by a couple of years in the Czech Republic, where he finally got round to writing his first novel The Pornographer of Vienna, based on the life of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele. In 2003, he moved to Brussels where he still works as a journalist and writer.
Craig Taylor’s non-fiction has appeared in the most prominent newspapers in three countries – the Guardian (UK), the New York Times (USA), and the Globe And Mail (Canada) – while his fiction has appeared in the Mississippi Review. For the past few years he has been writing One Million Tiny Plays About Britain for the Guardian’s Weekend magazine, and three of these plays were printed on handbags and given to the winners at the Cannes Film Festival. He also publishes his own photocopied magazines, including The Review of Everything I’ve Ever Encountered and Dark Tales of Clapham. His first book, Return To Akenfield, was published by Granta in 2006.