Tolu Agbelusi is a Nigerian British writer, performer, educator and lawyer. A Callaloo Fellow, she’s been published internationally, commissioned widely, led guest lectures to PhD students at Birbeck University and is working towards her first poetry pamphlet.
Raymond Antrobus is a British-Jamaican poet from Hackney, East London. He is the author of To Sweeten Bitter and The Perseverance. He is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and Complete Works 3. He has an MA in Spoken Word Education from Goldsmiths. In 2018 he was awarded The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize.
Sui Anukka is a Manchester based writer. Her work has been published in the Commonword anthologies: Elevator Fiction and Sounds that Exceed 80 Decibels. Sui is part of the Commonword Women in the Spotlight Programme. She is a graduate of the University of Bristol and the National Film and Television School.
Lynne E. Blackwood is a disabled Anglo-Indian writer of poetry, plays, stories, novels – who loves performance. Her stories feature in Closure, Asian Writer, Brighton Prize anthologies, amongst others. She’s being mentored by The Literary Consultancy for her collection based on her Anglo-Indian family history. Her second novel was a WriteNow 2017 finalist.
Siddhartha Bose’s books include two poetry collections, Kalagora and Digital Monsoon, a monograph on the grotesque, Back and Forth, and a play, No Dogs, No Indians. His theatre work includes Kalagora, London’s Perverted Children, and The Shroud. In 2011-2013 he was a Leverhulme Fellow in Drama at the University of London.
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a British-born Ghanaian poet and writer. A former Barbican Young Poet, her work has been commissioned by the Royal Academy of Arts in addition to being featured on BBC Radio 4. Her first pamphlet, Girl B, edited by Kwame Dawes, was published in 2017.
Michael Campbell is a poet, illustrator and aspiring author. His first poetry collection, I am not myself, was published by Sunesis Ministries Ltd. Michael is also working on a novel. He has a BA in Animation and a Masters in English Literature.
Nana-Essi Josephine Casely-Hayford is a storyteller and writer who works as a part-time Writing for Wellbeing Practitioner with Keighley Library – (Bradford Libraries) where she facilitates Positive Wellbeing and Expressive Visualisation through the Arts.
Maya Chowdhry’s writing is infused and influenced through her poetic work for radio, film, theatre and digital. Her poetry collections are Fossil (2016, Peepal Tree Press) and The Seamstress and the Global Garment (2009, Crocus). Her digital poetic work ‘Ripple’ was shortlisted for the 2015 Dot Award.
Rishi Dastidar is a fellow of The Complete Works, a consulting editor at The Rialto, a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, and chair of writer development organisation, Spread The Word. His debut collection is Ticker-tape (Nine Arches Press), from which a poem was included in The Forward Book of Poetry
Tishani Doshi is an award-winning poet, novelist and dancer. Her most recent book, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (Bloodaxe Books), is a PBS summer recommendation, a powerful collection of poems, which deal with coastal living, gender violence, memory, happiness, ageing, and what the point of poetry might be. She lives on a beach in Tamil Nadu with her husband and three dogs.
Zena Edwards is a writer, Live Literature Artist, Arts Activist and Project developer. She is co-founder of ‘ Voices That Shake!’ – a youth arts, race and power project and is the creative and educational Director of ‘ Verse In Dialogue’. Her work centres on issues of rehumanising marginalised voices, climate, the environment and social justice.
Samatar Elmi has been shortlisted for the Venture Award, New Generation African Poets, the Complete Works II and is a graduate of the Young Inscribe Mentoring Program. Poems have appeared in Magma, Iota, Scarf, Ink Sweat and Tears, Myths of the Near Future, the Echoing Gallery and Cadaverine.
Christina Fonthes is a Congolese-British writer. Her poetry, laden with themes of womanhood and sexuality has featured in several publications including Ake Review. Her mantra ‘telling stories through any means possible’ allows her to bring untold stories to life through writing, performance and digital art.
Patricia Foster McKenley is an award-winning poet, international performer, Inscribe contracted writer, co-host for ‘At The Inkwell London’ reading series, and ‘Malika’s Poetry Kitchen’ alumni. She’s released a poetry film, ‘LIPS’ and honoured at ‘TOGETHER WE RISE’ Women’s Awards for Poetry Services (2015). As SABLE Poet in residence she participated in the Mboka Festival in The Gambia, 2017.
Kat François is a performance artist, educator, playwright, director and personal trainer. She is a BBC and World poetry slam champion. Her play ‘Raising Lazarus’, on Caribbean soldiers in WW1, tours internationally. Kat teaches dance, poetry, drama and performance skills and contributes to BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Woman’s Hour.
Nandita Ghose’s poetry has been published in Southbank, Magma, X-Press and the Wolf magazines, and in the anthology The Iron Book of Humorous Verse. Her poem ‘This Nose’ won first prize for the funniest poem in the Edinburgh Fringe 2003. She has written plays for BBC Radio 4 and for TV.
Nikheel Gorolay has had poetry and book reviews published in SABLE LitMag and is currently redrafting his first novel. He holds an MA from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he researched representations of British womanhood in late nineteenth century India.
Maggie Harris is a Guyana-born writer. She has twice won the Guyana Prize for Literature and was Regional Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for ‘Sending for Chantal’. Her latest fiction is Writing on Water, (Seren) and Sixty Years of Loving, (Cane Arrow Press).
Joshua Idehen is a poet, teacher and musician. A British born Nigerian, he recently collaborated with The Comet Is Coming on their Mercury-nominated debut album Channel the Spirits and MOBO award-winning Sons of Kemet. He is touring a second album with the band Benin City, Last Night.
Keith Jarrett, former UK poetry slam champion and Rio International Poetry Slam winner 2014, is a PhD scholar at Birkbeck University, where he is completing his first novel. His monologue, ‘Safest Spot in Town’, has been aired on BBC Four. His book of poetry, Selah, was published in 2017.
Sumia Juxun is a Barbican Young Poet Alumni and Fourhubs’ 2018 Poetry Prize Winner. A linguist and programmer, she often facilitates coding and writing workshops in secondary schools, festivals and Keats House’s Creative Writing Summer School.
Pete Kalu’s art runs to film-making, coding and flash fiction. He can tightrope walk and led a carnival band called Moko Jumbies – Ghosts of the Gods.
Fawzia Muradali Kane was born in Trinidad & Tobago, and practices as an architect in London. Her first collection of poetry Tantie Diablesse (Waterloo Press 2011) was a poetry finalist for the 2012 Bocas Lit Fest prize. A pamphlet Houses of the Dead was published by Thamesis in 2014.
Rachel Long is a poet and facilitator. Her poems have featured in Magma, The London Magazine, and The Honest Ulsterman. She is assistant tutor on the Barbican Young Poets programme, and leader of Octavia – a poetry collective for women of colour, housed at Southbank Centre, London.
Adam Lowe is a writer, publisher and performer from Leeds (though he now lives in Manchester). He is LGBT History Month Poet Laureate.
Nick Makoha is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow & Complete Works Alumni. He won the 2015 Brunel International Poetry prize and the 2016 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection Man. His Kingdom of Gravity (Peepal Tree, 2017) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize.
Roy McFarlane was born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage and has been Birmingham’s Poet Laureate. Roy’s contributed to Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe 2012) and he’s the writer and editor of Celebrate Wha? (Smokestack 2011). His first poetry collection, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was published by Nine Arches Press (2018).
Momtaza Mehri is a poet, essayist and editor. She is a Complete Works Fellow and co-winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the 2017 Out-spoken Page Poetry Prize. She is the Young People’s Laureate for London (2018) and columnist-in-residence at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space.
Sai Murray’s first poetry collection Ad-liberation, was published in 2013. He was lead writer on Virtual Migrants 2015 touring production, Continent Chop Chop and runs artist/activist promotions agency Liquorice Fish. He is a poet facilitator on Voices that Shake!; a Numbi resident poet; and arts and politics editor of SABLE Lit Mag.
Selina Nwulu is a writer, poet and essayist. Her first chapbook The Secrets I Let Slip was published by Burning Eye Books and is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. She writes for several outlets such as the Guardian, New Humanist and Red Pepper. She was Young Poet Laureate for London 2015-16.
Louisa Adjoa Parker writes poetry, fiction and on black history. Her first poetry collection Salt-sweat and Tears was published by Cinnamon Press, who also published her pamphlet Blinking in the Light. Louisa’s work has appeared in various publications, including Wasafiri, Envoi, Out of Bounds, Under the Radar and Bare Fiction.
Aisha Phoenix writes poetry and stories. Her work appears in the Bath Flash Fiction Anthology, Litro USA online and Word Riot. She studies MA Creative Writing at Birkbeck and has a PhD in Sociology. As an undergraduate at Oxford she was part of the Slice ( ) Mango poetry collective.
Barsa Ray’s poems have been filmed for the Yorkshire Arts Festival, performed at the Ilkley Literature Festival, published in Inkposts, The Telegraph Sunday Magazine (Calcutta) and The Brainwave. She was shortlisted in The Asian Writer First Novel competition. She is an Inscribe writer currently writing her second novel.
Akila Richards is a published writer, poet and spoken word artist. She performs and reads in a range of settings including internationally. Recent work appeared in digital animation and printed on clothes in a collective exhibition. She has written a play based on her short story, ‘Secret Chamber’, published in Closure.
Maureen Roberts is Senior Development Officer at London Metropolitan Archives and curates the ‘Word on the Street’ arts festival. She managed Keats House Museum and is a Trustee of Black Cultural Archives. Her first poetry collection, My Grandmother Sings to Me was published by Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.
Roger Robinson is a writer who has performed worldwide and is an experienced workshop leader and lecturer in poetry. He was chosen by Decibel as one of 50 writers who have influenced the Black British writing canon.
Selina Rodrigues’ poetry has been published in a number of journals and her book will be published by Smokestack Books. She is an experienced performer and has been Poet in Residence at Open Square Gardens and the Poetry School. Selina is of Indian/English parentage and she writes about identity and the push-pull of behaviour and desire.
Sudeep Sen’s prize-winning books include Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems, Rain, Aria, The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor), Fractals: New & Selected Poems / Translations 1980-2015, and EroText. Sen is the first Asian honoured to speak and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature”.
Seni Seneviratne is a writer and multi-disciplinary creative artist. She has collaborated with film makers, visual artists, musicians and digital artists. Her most recent collaboration, ‘Lady of Situations’, combined poetry, theatre, digital art and music. Her latest poetry collection is, The Heart of It (Peepal Tree Press). www.seniseneviratne.com
Ioney Smallhorne is studying an MA in Creative Writing/Education at Goldsmiths University. She is also a filmmaker and enjoys translating her poems to the screen. When not writing, she is failing her motorbike test, growing vegetables, travelling, learning Italian and working at Nottingham Black Archive.
Rommi Smith is a poet, playwright and performer with numerous prestigious residencies for organisations from the British Council to the BBC. Inaugural Poet-in-Residence for British Parliament and the Inaugural-Writer-in-Residence for Keats House, Smith is John Barnard Scholar at Leeds University and a visiting scholar at City University New York.
Degna Stone, an Inscribe supported writer, is a co-founder of Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine and a contributing editor at The Rialto. She received a Northern Writers Award in 2015 and is a fellow of The Complete Works III. Appearances include StAnza International Poetry Festival and BBC Radio 3s The Verb.
Hugh Stultz is a Fundraising Consultant with Safe Ground, an arts organisation. Hugh’s poetry has been published in the UK and Jamaica. Hugh studied at the Jamaica School of Drama and Goldsmiths College and cites his drama background for the recurring performance motif within his poetry.
Ruth Sutoyé is a poet, creative producer and visual artist. She is a Roundhouse Resident Artist, Barbican Young Poet alumni and member of the SXWKS collective. Her work has featured in several publications and platforms including Opus, True Africa, Bad Betty Press and The Cob Gallery.
Keisha Thompson is a Manchester based writer, performance artist and producer. She works at Contact managing the Contact Young Company. Most recently, she received a co-commission from STUN and Contact to develop her new solo show, ‘Man on the Moon’. Her debut book, Lunar (40 poems and ‘The Man on the Moon’ script), was published in 2018.
Gemma Weekes is an interdisciplinary writer/poet, musicmaker and performer. Author of critically-acclaimed novel, Love Me (Chatto & Windus), and chapbook I Can Only Fix You if You Break, she is currently working on a new immersive stage piece, her second novel, and several scripts for TV & film.
Indigo Williams is a British Nigerian poet from South London. She is the founder of ‘I Shape Beauty’ blog and has performed at events and venues such as: BBC Radio 4’s ‘Bespoken Word’, The Royal Shakespeare Company and Glastonbury.
Dorothy Wang is Professor in the American Studies Program and Faculty Affiliate in the English Department at Williams College (Massachusetts). Her monograph, Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American Poetry (Stanford University Press, 2013), received the Association for Asian American Studies’ award for best book of literary criticism in 2016, garnered honorable mention in the Poetry Foundation's inaugural Pegasus Awards for Criticism in 2014, and was named one of The New Yorker’s ‘The Books We Loved in 2016’. The first national conference on race and creative writing in the United States was named ‘Thinking Its Presence’ and was convened in 2014, 2015, and 2017 at the University of Montana (twice) and the University of Arizona. Wang conceived of and co-founded the ‘Race and Poetry and Poetics in the UK’ (RAPAPUK) research initiative, which held its second conference at Queens’ College, Cambridge University, in October 2018. She has also published on Asian Australian literature.
The editors
Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a novelist, poet, broadcaster and editor. He is the author of the book of poems The Makings of You and the hybrid novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, which is translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan and Japanese. The French translation of the novel won the 2014 Prix Baudelaire, Prix Mahogany and Prix Laure Bataillon and was selected by leading literary magazine LIRE as the Best First Foreign Book of the year in 2014. He is a 2007 recipient of Ghana’s ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy. He writes for children under the name K. P. Kojo and is the founder and senior editor at flipped eye publishing. In 2014, he was selected as one of Africa’s 39 most promising authors of the new generation for the World Book Capital Africa 39 Project and he is the current producer of Literature and Talks at the Brighton Dome & Festival.
Kadija (George) Sesay, FRSA, is the Publications Manager for the Inscribe Programme for Peepal Tree Press. She is the founder/publisher of SABLE LitMag, SABLE LitFest, and co-founder of The Mboka Festival of Arts, Culture and Sport in The Gambia. She is the editor of several anthologies of work by writers of African and Asian descent and her poetry collection, Irki (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry in 2014. She received an Arts Council England grant for Research and Development for her second collection, The Modern Pan Africanist’s Journey and produced an app based on it, The Modern Pan Africanist’s Journey. http://www.sablelitmag.org/mpajweb1/webapp/
Kadija has received several awards for her work in the Creative Arts. She is a Fellow of the George Bell Institute, a Fellow of the Kennedy Arts Centre of Performance Arts Management. She is a postgraduate AHRC /TECHNE scholarship researcher on Black British Publishers at Brighton University. She’s also received a research scholarship for the Library of Congress (Washington DC) for 2019.