Edward Brooke-Hitching is a former long-serving 'QI Elf' (factfinder and scriptwriter for the hit BBC television series QI) turned bestselling author of nonfiction works of curious history. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he grew up in a rare book shop before working for a London auctioneer, and now lives in his own dusty heap of old paintings, books and maps in Berkshire with his Labrador Annie Jump Cannon.

Oksana Drachkovska was born in Chernivtsi (Ukraine) in 1987. She grew up in Chernivtsi and moved on to study at an art college located in the Carpathians then moved to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lviv, where she's been living for the past 12 years. There are quite a few things that inspire her (some of them might be a little weird)--trees, the sea and the ocean, as well as birds and clouds.