Chapter One is delighted to welcome Janeen Hayat and Gareth P. Jones as our first author ambassadors, marking the launch of our One Million Stories by 2030 campaign as part of the National Year of Reading 2026.

Janeen Hayat

Janeen is a children's author and advocate for educational equality. Before becoming a writer, she practiced as a lawyer and worked as a teacher and her passionate advocacy of an education system that gives every child a fair chance led to her role as Director of Collective Action at the education charity The Fair Education Alliance. In 2023, Hayat won the Guppy Open Submission Competition which led to the publication in 2025 of her debut children’s novel Evie and Maryam’s Family Tree, which won the Younger Readers category of the 2026 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and has been shortlisted for the 2026 Branford Boase Award. The sequel, Evie and Maryam’s Little Lies, was published in 2026.

www.janeenhayat.com

Gareth P. Jones

Gareth is the author of the comic gothic cult classic, The Thornthwaite Inheritance, the Blue Peter Award winning The Considine Curse and Death or Ice Cream? He has written various series fiction including Dragon Detective, Ninja Meerkats and Solve Your Own Mystery. His picture books include Rabunzel, CinderGorilla, The Lion on the Bus and The Dinosaurs are Having a Party.

He has written for television and loves to visit schools. A consummate festival performer and multi-instrumentalist, Gareth has now taken to writing musicals.

garethwrites.co.uk

Both ambassadors will support Chapter One's mission to close the reading gap by encouraging more workplaces to get involved in our Online Reading Volunteers Programme, which connects corporate employees with children aged 5 to 8 for weekly 30-minute online reading sessions during the school day.

Emma Bell, CEO of Chapter One said: “Only one in three children in this country enjoy reading. Closing that gap takes more than schools can manage alone - it takes workplaces, communities and voices that children and adults alike trust. Gareth and Janeen are two of those voices. Their support for Chapter One and One Million Stories by 2030 sends a clear signal: this campaign belongs to everyone who believes that reading can change a child's life. We couldn't be more pleased to have them on board."