Belfast-born Gavin Weston is a multi-media artist, writer, lecturer and inventor and lives on the Ards Peninsula with his family, parrot and various other animals. He studied Fine Art at Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design and Goldsmiths’ College, London, and subsequently worked and taught in West Africa.
In 1995 he completed an MA at the University of Ulster, where he has also worked as a visiting lecturer. He was an Associate Lecturer at Belfast Metropolitan College for many years and a regular contributor to The Sunday Times from 1994 to 2002. He is a former prize-winner of The Claremorris Open and Iontas, a recipient of The Tyrone Guthrie Award and was nominated for The Becks Futures Award in 2002.
Russell Whitfield was born in Shepherds Bush in 1971. An only child, he was raised in Hounslow, West London. Russell’s near life long fascination with ancient Greece and Rome was sparked by seeing The Three Hundred Spartans on ITV in the seventies. Educated to A-Level, he did not complete college, preferring instead to seek fame and fortune in a heavy metal band. Fame and fortune were not forthcoming and following a series of jobs he now works as an internet content editor. Russ lives with his wife and daughter in Surrey.
Sally Zigmond lives in North Yorkshire where much of Hope Against Hope is set. She has written professionally for eleven years, publishing several short stories and a novella: Chasing Angels. For several years she was commissioning editor for QWF, the literary short fiction magazine for women and is reviews editor for The Historical Novels Review.