Patrick Ness is the internationally and New York Times bestselling author of A Monster Calls, which won both the Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, and was made into a major motion picture for which he wrote the screenplay. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling Chaos Walking trilogy, More Than This, Release, Different for Boys, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, Burn, and Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody. His many accolades include two Carnegie Medals, an Olivier Award, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Book Trust Teenage Prize, and the Costa Children’s Book Award. Ness lives in London and his latest book for young adults is Piper at the Gates of Dusk (2026).
Cassandra Campbell is an actress, director and teacher who has performed in New York at the Public Theatre, the Mint Theater and the Clurman Theatre. She is also the prolific and highly accomplished audiobook narrator of more than 700 titles to date. Winner of four Audie Awards from the Audio Publishers Association and nominated for a dozen more, she has consistently been an AudioFile Magazine Best Narrator as well as a Publisher’s Weekly Best Narrator of the Year. In 2018, she was inducted into Audible’s Narrator Hall of Fame. As an acting teacher, she spent five years as a faculty member of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and has performed in and directed dozens of plays at theatres across the country.