Kathryn Aalto is an American historian, designer, speaker and author living in Exeter. She has written three books including Nature and Human Intervention (2011), the New York Times bestseller The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood (2015), and Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World (2020). She is a regular contributor to publications including Outside, Sierra and Smithsonian Magazine, and is co-founder of the Rural Writing Institute.

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett is an author and academic whose creative and critical work has a largely environmental focus. Her publications include the Sunday Times Poetry Book of the Year Swims (2017), the forthcoming collection Of Sea (2021), and the monograph A Social Biography of Contemporary Innovative Poetry Communities: The Gift, the Wager and Poethics (2017). Her nature writing memoir The Grassling: A Geological Memoir (2019) was a winner of the Penguin Random House WriteNow award. She is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Northumbria University.

Matthew Cobb is a professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, where his research focuses on the sense of smell, insect behaviour and the history of science. He is also a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement, and has translated five books on popular science and science history from French into English. His acclaimed book The Idea of the Brain was shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.

Sara Hunt worked in publishing in London and New York before founding award-winning independent publisher Saraband in 1994, specialising in narrative non-fiction – particularly in place and life writing – and literary fiction. Originally from Lancashire, she has a lifelong connection with the Lake District. Saraband has published Wainwright Prize-listed nature titles, as well as award-nominated and winning books in the Booker, Rathbones Folio, Saltire Society, Lakeland, Highland and Portico prizes. Saraband provides a platform for underrepresented voices from all parts of the UK and internationally.