“We hope these literary works will arouse people’s curiosity and inspire them to enrich their lives by venturing into the unknown,” he says.

The best romance novels for summer 2019

Tickets for the week-long event at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre are now on sale (adults HK$25, children HK$10) via Hong Kong Ticketing and all 7-Eleven and Circle K stores. Those who buy a “super pass” (HK$80) will have unlimited access to the fair and be able to skip the queues.

Natasha Pulley

Pulley is a British fantasy and historical fiction writer. Her debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, was published in 2015 and became an international bestseller. Her second novel, The Bedlam Stacks, was published in 2017. She studied English at Oxford and creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich before completing a teaching fellowship at Waseda University in Tokyo.

Speculative Fiction with Natasha Pulley, July 17, 7.00pm-8.30pm

Steven Erikson

Steven Erikson is the pseudonym of Steve Rune Lundin, a Canadian novelist best known for his 10-volume epic fantasy series The Malazan Book of the Fallen, as well as other works of fantasy, science fiction and contemporary fiction. He is an anthropologist and archaeologist by training and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lived in the UK for a period with his wife and son, before returning to Canada in 2012.

Anthropology in World-Building, July 18, 3.00pm-4.30pm

Will Dean

British author Will Dean grew up in England’s East Midlands and went on to study at the London School of Economics. It was while he was working in London that he developed a passion for Sweden and travelled there twice a week to build the woodland home where he now lives with his Swedish wife and son.

His first novel, Dark Pines, was published to critical acclaim in 2017. Last year it was shortlisted for The Guardian’s Not the Booker prize, selected as one of the 10 books discussed on British TV channel ITV’s Zoe Ball’s TV Book Club, and named as a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. Red Snow, the second book in the series, was published in January.

Books are More Powerful Than Movies, July 19, 3.00pm-4.30pm

Emma Newman

Emma Newman writes dark short stories and urban fantasy novels, as well as records audiobooks in all genres. Her debut short-story collection From Dark Places was published in 2011 and her new urban fantasy series The Split Worlds was recently published by Angry Robot Books.

She won the British Fantasy Society Best Short Story Award 2015 for A Woman’s Place in the Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets anthology. Her science fiction novel, After Atlas, was shortlisted for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke award and the third novel in her Planetfall series, Before Mars, has been shortlisted for a BSFA Best Novel award. She also co-wrote and hosted the podcast “Tea and Jeopardy”, which won an Alfie award and a Hugo award for best fancast.

Let Me Tell You a Story. What It Is Really Like To Be An Audiobook Narrator, July 19, 6.00pm-7.30pm

Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin

Forssén Ehrlin was born and raised in Huskvarna, a small city in Sweden. In his early 20s he became fascinated in personal development and quit his job to study psychology. Alongside that he established a company to help people overcome personal challenges.

In 2011, he self-published the children’s book The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep, to help parents get their children to fall asleep. It became a bestseller and has been translated into 46 languages, selling more than three million copies. His latest children’s book, Brave Morris: A Week Upside Down, immediately became a No.1 bestseller in Japan.

How To Get 3 Million Children To Fall Asleep? July 20, 6.00pm-7.30pm

Kanae Minato

Born in Hiroshima in Japan, Minato published her first novel Confessions in 2008 which became a bestseller and won the Japanese Booksellers Award. It sold over three million copies and was later adapted into a successful film. In 2014 it was released in English, and was nominated by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best mysteries of 2014.

Later books have won a string of awards including the 2012 Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Short Story (for Umi no Hoshi) and the 2016 Yamamoto Shugoro Prize (for Utopia).

Dialogue with Award-Winning Mystery Novelist Ms Kanae Minato, July 21, 3.00pm-4.30pm

Bernard Weber

Bernard Weber is one of France’s most widely read authors and his work has been translated into 35 languages. His bestselling series, The Ants Trilogy, looks at the world from the perspective of ants and raises questions regarding interspecies communication. He is considered a “cult author” in Russia and South Korea where his works are hugely popular.

He is known for challenging the frontiers of imagination by exploring all the mysteries of living creatures and the afterlife with humour.

Reality vs Fantasy: How To Develop Imagination?, July 21, 6.00pm-7.30pm

Selja Ahava

Finish author and scriptwriter Selja Ahava’s debut novel The Day the Whale Swam Through London was awarded the Laila Hirvisaari Prize in 2010. Her second book, Things That Fall From the Sky, won the EU Prize for Literature in 2016 and was nominated for the Finlandia Prize. Its translation rights have been sold to 17 territories. Her autobiographical novel Before My Husband Disappears was released in 2017.

She is working on a fourth novel that explores metamorphoses, both in insects and fictional characters.

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Autobiographical in Fiction, July 22, 3.00pm-4.40pm

Mark O’Neill

O’Neill is a veteran China correspondent, journalist and author based in Hong Kong. He has written 10 books on Chinese, Hong Kong and Macau history; nine have editions in Chinese. The latest, which he will present at the book fair, How South Asians Helped to Make Hong Kong, is the remarkable story of the Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalese, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis who played a key role in making the city what it is over the past 180 years.

How South Asians Helped to Make Hong Kong, July 22, 6.00pm-7.30pm