Ruth Gilchrist is a development worker with Newcastle-upon-Tyne YMCA. She is currently involved in setting up a new settlement with the two universities and the YMCA. She is a member of the editorial board of Youth and Policy. She has been involved in researching rural youth provision and truancy and is employed as a part-time lecturer in community arts at the University of Durham.
Tony Jeffs is senior lecturer at the University of Durham community youth work unit. He previously taught social policy and sociology at the University of Northumbria. He was the founding editor of Youth and Policy and co-edited the Yearbook of Social Work and Social Welfare. He has written extensively on youth work, informal education and social work. He is the author of Young People and the Youth Service.
John Matthews was born in the North of England in 1948. He has been a professional writer since 1980, and has produced over forty books ranging from Celtic and Arthurian legends to collections of stories, essays, and poetry He has given workshops in Britain, Central Europe, and America and is primarily concerned with the interpretation of myth. He is an internationally renowned authority on mythology and folklore with a special interest in the Arthurian and Grail traditions and Celtic lore. Matthews best known works are The Grail: Quest for Eternal Life, Taliesin: Shamanism and the Bardic Mysteries in Britain and Ireland, and The Celtic Shaman. Other books include Arthur and the Grail Quest, Within the Hollow Hills, and The Winter Solstice, which won the Benjamin Franklin Award in 1998. Matthews has also co-authored with his wife, Caitlin Matthews, a study of the Western mystery tradition, The Western Way. Together they designed and wrote the best-selling Arthurian Tarot, which has sold more than 50,000 copies and has been translated into several languages.