Oliver and the Seawigs Award-winning team

Philip Reeve was born and raised in Brighton, where he worked in a bookshop for years while also producing and directing a number of no-budget theatre projects.

Philip then began illustrating and has since provided cartoons and jokes for around forty books, including the best-selling Scholastic series Horrible Histories, as well as Murderous Maths and Dead Famous.

He’s been writing stories since he was five, but Mortal Engines was the first to be published. Mortal Engines defies easy categorisation. It is a gripping adventure story set in an inspired fantasy world, where moving cities trawl the globe. A magical and unique read, it immediately caught the attention of readers and reviewers and won several major awards. Three more Hungry Cities novels followed, and Philip’s latest project are the Fever Crumb books, prequels set centuries before the events of Mortal Engines.

Philip has also written Buster Bayliss, a series for younger readers, and stand alone novels including Here Lies Arthur, which won the Carnegie Medal.

Philip lives in Devon with his wife and son and his interests are walking, drawing, writing and reading.

Sarah McIntyre was born in Seattle. She studied Russian literature and art history at Bryn Mawr College and then earned a distinction while doing her Master’s degree in Illustration at Camberwell College of the Arts in London. She brings her love of travel and adventure to her work, and loves the thrill of being a perpetual tourist in London, where she has lived since 1999.

It was whilst studying for her MA that Sarah became interested in comics.‘I had loved comics as a kid, such as Calvin & Hobbes and Archie, but I had sort of lost my way as an adult, thinking comics were mostly about superheroes, which I didn’t like so much. When I was introduced to adult comics by people such as Posy Simmonds and Craig Thompson, I knew I had found a whole new world.’

She was commissioned by David Fickling to produce a comic strip for the ground breaking DFC. Her creation; Vern & Lettuce was immensely popular and Sarah used both her blog and Facebook to attract new friends and fans everyday, gaining the attention of The Guardian who featured the strip in their The Comic section on Saturdays.

Her picture book with Giles Andreae, Morris the Mankiest Monster, introduced the world to a loveable monster with stomach-turning personal habits, and won both the Sheffield and Bishop’s Stortford Children’s Book Awards, as voted by children. Sarah has gone on to create many more picture books including the very successful You Can’t Eat a Princess and the follow-up, You Can’t Scare a Princess!

In 2013, Sarah teamed up with Philip Reeve for Oliver and the Seawigs, bonkers fiction for young readers crammed with brilliant illustrations. This was swiftly followed by Cakes in Space, and Pugs of the Frozen North which won the Independent Bookshop Week Children’s Book of the Year Award.

Find out more about Sarah at www.jabberworks.co.uk