Our judge for this competition is award-winning author Ruth Druart

Ruth Druart grew up on the Isle of Wight, leaving at eighteen to study psychology at the University of Leicester. In 1993 she moved to Paris, the city that inspired her to write, where she pursued a career in international education before turning to writing full-time. Her first book, While Paris Slept, was published in 2021, and her second novel, The Last Hours in Paris, was published in 2022. They have been translated into more than twenty languages, and Ruth is currently working on a third.