Dr Lemn Sissay MBE is associate artist at Southbank Centre, patron of The Letterbox Club and The Reader Organisation, ambassador for The Children’s Reading Fund, trustee of Forward Arts Foundation and inaugural trustee of World Book Night. He has been a writer from birth and foremost a poet.

Born in Aberdeen in 1927, Malcom Slessor studied chemical engineering at the University of Edinburgh. After graduating he went on to have a career as an academic and also worked in the private sector.

With a keen interest in mountaineering and exploration Slessor participated in the ground-breaking British North Greenland Expedition from 1952 to 1953 as an assistant physicist and surveyor. He later co-led an expedition to the Pamirs region of Central Asia, chronicling the experience in a book he authored. As well as writing many papers in a professional capacity he also wrote about experiences of mountaineering and Scotland. Slessor died from a suspected heart attack while walking in the Scottish Highlands in 2007.

Dave Smith is an American poet, writer, critic, editor, and educator.