Simon Sylvester is a writer, teacher and occasional filmmaker. His first novel, The Visitors, was published by Quercus in 2014, going on to win the Book Box prize and the Guardian Not The Booker prize. The Visitors has been a Book of the Month for Waterstones Scotland and part of W.H. Smith's Fresh Talent 2015. Simon's short stories have been published by dozens of magazines and journals, and he has written more than a thousand flash stories on Twitter. He lives in Cumbria with the painter Monica Metsers and their daughter Isadora.