The Novice

Trudi Canavan is a bestselling Australian writer of fantasy novels, who has been making up stories about people and places that don’t exist for as long as she can remember. While establishing her writing career, she worked as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer, and is best known for her bestselling fantasy trilogies The Black Magician and Age of the Five. The third book in her The Traitor Spy trilogy, The Traitor Queen, reached #1 on the UK Times Hardback bestseller list in 2011, while The Magician’s Apprentice, the prequel to The Black Magician trilogy, won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2009. Subsequently, Canavan has created a new fantasy adventure series called Millennium's Rule, with a completely new setting comprising multiple worlds which characters can cross between. This has also been a success, with Thief's Magic a joint Ditmar winner for Best Novel of 2015 and the first three books reaching bestseller status. Trudi Canavan lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Richard Aspel is a talented narrator of children's and adult audiobooks. He trained and worked in London, before returning to Australia where he has worked extensively in television, theatre and radio. His television credits include Neighbours and Carson's Law, and he provided various voices for The Silver Brumby animated series. Richard was nominated for the prestigious Audie Award (US) for his narration of The Mark of the Angel by Nancy Huston.