Robert Macfarlane's debut, Mountains of the Mind, was released to unanimous praise - and a string of literary accolades - in 2003. His writing has since established a new authority on the relationship between nature, identity and art, and in so doing cemented his reputation as one of the region's most prolific naturalists.

I'd happily burn all of Thackeray. It's simply not funny or especially revelatory.

A former teacher and one-time ski lodge manager, Emma Henderson graduated with a distinction from Birkbeck's MA Creative Writing course in 2006. Her luminous debut, Grace Williams Says It Loud (Sceptre, 2010), was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize and the Orange Prize. A second novel is in the works.

Sam Leith served as literary editor of the Daily Telegraph until 2008 and is the author of two award-winning books, Dead Pets and Sod's Law. His work has also appeared in - amongst other publications - the Evening Standard, The Guardian, and the Sunday Times. Leith's first novel, The Coincidence Engine was released in February.

What was it about Tolstoy that made Norman Mailer tick? What novels inspired Joyce Carol Oates or Margaret Atwood to write the way they do? "If you were stranded on a desert island with only one book to read, which would it be?"