Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was a novelist who is best known for writing the Gothic novel Frankenstein (1818). She edited and promoted the works of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.

Dr Jenni Fagan is an award-winning poet, novelist and screenwriter. After the publication of her debut novel, The Panopticon, Jenni was selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists. She has been on lists including the Desmond Elliott Prize, James Tait Black, Sunday Times Short Story Prize and the BBC International Story Prize. The Sunlight Pilgrims saw her win Scottish Author of the Year at the Herald Culture Awards. Her third novel Luckenbooth was praised in The New York Times Book Review, who named her The Patron Saint of Literary Street Urchins. In 2022, Polygon published her most recent novel, Hex, and The Bone Library, a poetry collection written during her time as a Writer in Residence at the Dick Vet Bone Library. In 2024, her memoir Ootlin is due to be published, as is her seventh poetry collection A Swan's Neck on the Butcher's Block. Fagan recently wrote two hundred poems for a collectors book called Heart of the Spirit, celebrating 200 years of The Macallan whisky.