The Young Inferno

John Agard

John Agard was born in 1949 in Georgetown, Guyana (then called British Guiana). He moved to England in 1977 when he became a touring lecturer for the Commonwealth Institute to promote a better understanding of Caribbean culture. Over the course of the next 8 years he visited 2,500 schools - and started writing poetry for children. Since then, he has published more than 50 books of poetry for all ages, stories and non fiction, including A Caribbean Dozen which he also co-edited with his wife Grace Nichols. 

His collections for young readers include The Young Inferno, a teenage spin on Dante's Inferno, Einstein, The Girl Who Hated Maths and Hello H20, both illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura. His adult collections include Alternative Anthem and his latest, Playing the Ghost Of Maimonides. His first non-fiction, entitled Book, tells the history of the book in the voice of the book. His awards include the Casa de las Americas Poetry Prize, the Paul Hamlyn Award and the 2012 Queen's Gold Medal for poetry. His poems Half Caste and Checking Out Me History have been on the GCSE curriculum since 2002. In 2021, he was awarded the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in Sussex.

Satoshi Kitamura

Satoshi Kitamura is both an author and illustrator. He was born in 1956 in Tokyo. He says that when he was young he read comics and admits that these have had a great influence on his style. He says he was also influenced by anything visual from a tin of sardines to the fine art of the East and the West. He was not trained as an artist, but at the age of 19 began to do commercial work. He moved to London in 1979 and worked mainly designing greeting cards. He started illustrating for Andersen Press in 1981. At this time he had an exhibition of his work at the Neal Street Gallery in Covent Garden, which Klaus Flugge visited and showed him the text of Angry Arthur.

Angry Arthur, written by Hiawyn Oram, was published in 1982 to great acclaim, winning the Mother Goose Award in 1983 and the Japanese Picture Book Award. In 1989, UFO diary was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize, an award he later went on to win for Me and My Cat, which was also shortlisted for the Kurt Mashler Award. In 2006, Satoshi’s collaboration with Colin McNaughton, Once Upon an Ordinary School Day, won The Japan Picture Book Award for best translated book. Satoshi’s book, Millie’s Marvellous Hat, was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Award in 2010.