Katrina Manson is an award-winning journalist who covered Africa for 12 years, living in Kenya, DR Congo, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso. During this time she co-authored the first ever travel guidebooks to Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso, published by Bradt Guides. She is currently a Bloomberg News reporter covering the nexus of cyber and emerging technology with national security; before that, she worked for the Financial Times and for Reuters. After Bradt accepted the urgings of Manson and co-author James Knight to publish the first edition of their Sierra Leone guidebook, just as the country was emerging from a desperate civil war, the duo's explorations revealed 'a beautiful, storied, proud, sometimes painful, but always absorbing country'. Manson has subsequently witnessed 'how the country can intoxicate and bewitch visitors, whether diaspora returning home, tourists looking for something new, or foreign workers keen to explore'.

James Knight has extensive experience of working in emerging-market countries as a journalist, writer and consultant. He now works at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, having previously been a Senior Associate at a London-based communications agency, and freelanced for Reuters, ITV and The Sunday Times. He has lived across Africa, in Buenos Aires and Brussels, and is the co-author of two Bradt guidebooks to African countries. Researching the first edition of Bradt's Sierra Leone with journalist Katrina Manson, the duo 'found in its resilient splendour a place where you can track monkeys, buffalo, and rare hippos; dine on an unspoilt, empty beach with only the moon for company; dance all night in Freetown's thriving scene; step onto a former slave island drenched in history; clamber to the top of mist-shrouded mountains; and listen to the anger of the surf off abandoned beaches'.