Toby Litt, born in 1968 in Bedford, is the author of Adventures in Capitalism (1996), a set of short stories which he wrote whilst studying creative writing under Malcolm Bradbury at the University of East Anglia. His other works include Beatniks (1997), Corpsing (2000) and Deadkidsongs (2001).

Romesh Gunesekara, born in 1954 in Sri Lanka, lives in London. He has been a writer-in-residence in Copenhagen, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Southampton. His first novel Reef, published in 1994, was short-listed as a finalist for the Booker Prize, as well as for the Guardian Fiction Prize. In the United States he was nominated for a New Voice Award.

His books Monkfish Moon (1992) and The Sandglass (1998) were short-listed for several prizes, such as the BBC Asia Award for Achievement in Writing & Literature, the Premio Mondello Five Continents and in 1995 he won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award in Britain.

Sinead Morrissey was born on April 24, 1972, in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. She now lives in Belfast. She has published two collections of poetry, There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996) and Between Here and There (2001). She won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1990, the Eric Gregory Award in 1996 and the Rupert and Eithne Strong Trust Award in 2002. She now teaches creative writing at Queen University.

Susan Elderkin was born in 1968, the daughter of an architect and a concert pianist, and grew up on the outskirts of London. She started writing at a young age. Her first novel Sunset over Chocolate Mountains (2000) tells the story of a corpulent Englishman, Theobald Moon, who sets up a mobile home in the desert and brings up his daughter Josie on a diet of fairytales and ice-cream - while keeping from her his terrible secret. It won the Betty Trask Award for first novels. Her second novel Voices Sets in Kimberley, North-west Australia, was published in October this year.

Ye Yanbin, born in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province of northeast China, in 1948, is a contemporary Chinese writer and poet. He is deputy editor-in-chief of China's national poetry magazine Poetry, which is published by the Chinese Writers' Association.

He has produced numerous collections of poems, many of which have been translated into English, French, German, Japanese and Italian. His work has been selected for study in schools and universities.

His collections of poetry include No Regret (1983), Mother Spring (1986), Mourn from the Heart (1986), Prisoner and Pigeon (1988), Halfway between Heaven and Hell (1989), Song of Blood (1991), and Adam's Apple (1992).

Chen Danyan, born 1958 in Beijing, works and lives in Shanghai. She studied Chinese literature at Eastern China Normal University. She now works as an independent writer and journalist. Her major works include The Chinese Girl, which took out the Shanghai Young Writers' Prize in 1984, and When Someone Suffers Misfortune, which won Chen Bochui Children's Literature Prize in 1986. Other top works are Trilogy of a Middle School Girl (1988), Letting Go (1991) and A Girl (1992) (also known as Nine Lives.)

Zhang Mei was born in 1958 in a small town in Guangdong Province. She is chief-editor of the Guangzhou Literature Magazine and a staff member of the Guangzhou Literature Institute. She has been a member of the Chinese Writers' Association since 1993.

Her main works include Multi-faced Life, Attending Father's Wedding, Drunk Love Belief, Who Understands Romance and This is Something that Hurts.

Her novel All Roads Lead To the Same Destination was recognized as the best new novel at the Seventh Guangzhou New Writers and New Writings Literature Festival. Her novel Wooden Shoes was a prize winner at the Second Guangzhou Literature Festival.

Zhang Zhe (Zhang Bo), born in 1967 in central China's Henan Province, graduated from Southwest Normal University with a major in Chinese literature and later obtained a Master's degree in Law from Peking University. He used to work as a journalist for Xinhua News Agency and South China Weekend. His writing has been printed in major literature magazines including Harvest, People's Literature, October and Master. His most well known novel is Peaches and Plums (2002).

(China Daily December 13, 2003)