Hanif Kureishi CBE is a playwright, screenwriter, novelist and film-maker. His novels include The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album and Intimacy. He is also the author of story collections, including Love in a Blue Time and The Body, plays, including Outskirts, Borderline and Sleep With Me, and screenplays, including My Beautiful Laundrette and My Son the Fanatic. Among his other publications are the collection of essays Dreaming and Scheming, The Word and the Bomb and the memoir My Ear at His Heart. His latest work is Collected Stories, an anthology of writing spanning the later part of his career. Kureishi has been awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and was appointed a CBE in 2008 for services to literature and drama. In that same year he was listed in The Times as one of 'The 50 Greatest British Writers since 1945'. Kureishi lives in London with his wife and children.
Steven Gale is an arts and education manager based in London. He has worked at theatres in England and Scotland, and taught at universities in Ireland and the United States. He was assistant artistic director at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh for six years, and assistant director to the renowned Spanish theatre director Calixto Bieito on two acclaimed Edinburgh International Festival productions, Life is a Dream and Barbaric Comedies. Steven has previously chaired events at literature festivals including Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Cambridge, Brighton and Sydney.