Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, England in 1946 and grew up in Zimbabwe and Wales. He worked as a teacher for many years and his first children's novel came out in 1982. He has won many awards, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Book Award, the Smarties Prize, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and a CBE. His acclaimed fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, comprising Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, has been published in 39 languages, and the first volume was made into a major film. A BBC drama series based on His Dark Materials, on which Philip is an executive producer, aired its first series in 2019. Fred Fordham was born in 1985 and grew up in North London. He studied Politics and Philosophy at Sussex University while working as a portrait painter and occasional tutor. Here he discovered comics after reading Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. This book sparked a general interest in the form, and particularly in the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinees tradition. He wrote and illustrated his first graphic novel, Nightfall, which was published in France by Editions Delcourt in 2013, and he has since contributed to The Phoenix comic, the Guardian, and David Lloyd's online magazine, Aces Weekly. He also continues to paint.