Maureen Duffy (1933-2026) was a British poet, playwright, and novelist. After a difficult childhood, she put herself through university by teaching in junior schools, taking her degree in English from King's College London in 1956. After five more years teaching, she turned to writing full-time in 1961, publishing more than 30 works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama in the years since. As an activist, she championed LGBTQ+ rights (and was one of the first British women to publicly comeout as gay), as well as the rights of animals and authors. She was a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature as well as Honorary President of both the British Copyright Council and the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society. In 2025, she won the inaugural RSL Pioneer Prize, which spotlights and celebrates women writers over 60 who have been trailblazers in their field. Bernardine Evaristo , MBE and OBE, is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other made her the first black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019, and won the Fiction Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2020, where she also won Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award.

In 2025 she was awarded the Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and President of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London with her husband. ".