Akshat Gupta is a national bestselling author, a TEDx speaker and an excelling screenwriter and dialogue writer in the Indian film industry. The Hidden Hindu series, authored by him, has sold over 1 lakh copies, with each book a national bestseller. Akshat is well known in the publishing industry, as well as in the Indian film industry, with a number of films and web-series signed on his name.

A. B. Poranek grew up in Canada but spent her summers in the Polish countryside, raiding her dziadek's library and helping care for his chickens. Her love of animals led her to pursue a degree in veterinary medicine, though she never stopped writing along the way. Her first novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, is an ode to Poland’s wild woodlands, wilder folktales, and the girls who were raised by them.

Jacqueline Wilson (Author) Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first novel when she was nine years old, and she has been writing ever since. She is now one of Britain's bestselling and most beloved children's authors. She has written over 100 books and is the creator of characters such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather. More than forty million copies of her books have been sold.As well as winning many awards for her books, including the Children's Book of the Year, Jacqueline is a former Children's Laureate, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame.Jacqueline is also a great reader, and has amassed over 20,000 books, along with her famous collection of silver rings.Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first novel when she was nine years old, and she has been writing ever since. She is now one of Britain’s bestselling and most beloved children’s authors. She has written over 100 books and is the creator of characters such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather. More than forty million copies of her books have been sold.As well as winning many awards for her books, including the Children’s Book of the Year, Jacqueline is a former Children’s Laureate, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame.Jacqueline is also a great reader, and has amassed over 20,000 books, along with her famous collection of silver rings.Find out more about Jacqueline and her books at www.jacquelinewilson.co.uk

Daniel Rasmussen is the founder and portfolio manager of Verdad Advisers, a ~$900M hedge fund. Before starting Verdad, Dan worked at Bain Capital Private Equity and Bridgewater Associates. He is a member of the investment committee of the Trustees of Donations of the Episcopal Church, is the New York Times bestselling author of American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt, and in 2017, was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Dan is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and his investment research has been featured in multiple volumes of The Best Investment Writing. Dan earned an AB from Harvard College summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Dinesh C. Sharma is an award-winning journalist and author based in Delhi. In a career spanning close to four decades, he has written extensively on science and technology, climate change, health, environment and innovation for Indian and global media, including The Lancet and Wired. He was previously science editor at Mail Today and managing editor at India Science Wire. In 2008, he travelled to the Arctic and joined an international scientific expedition there to report on climate change.He is the author of the national bestseller Indian Innovation, Not Jugaad. His book The Outsourcer: The Story of India's IT Revolution was awarded the Computer History Museum Book Prize in 2016. His most recent book is Beyond Biryani: The Making of a Globalised Hyderabad.Sharma has been a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow and also visiting faculty at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and at Ateneo de Manila University, Manila. He tweets on X as @dineshcsharma

Charlotte Stein is the RT nominated author of over fifty short stories, novellas and novels, including When Grumpy Met Sunshine, a book The New York Times called “a triumph”. When not writing deeply emotional and intensely sexy books, she can be found eating jelly turtles, getting way too excited over a million movies and TV shows, and occasionally lusting after moustaches. She lives in Leeds with her family.

Jon Krakauer is a mountaineer and the author of Eiger Dreams, Into the Wild, (which was on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and was made into a film starring Emile Hirsch and Kristen Stewart) Into Thin Air, Iceland, Under the Banner of Heaven and Where Men Win Glory. He is also the editor of the Modern Library Exploration series. He has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. According to the award citation, "Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer."