Courttia Newland is a British writer of Jamaican and Barbadian heritage.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, born in the United Kingdom to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a performance poet, writer, publisher and sociocultural commentator. He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project. He writes for children under the name K.P. Kojo.
Kadija George, Hon. FRSL, also known as Kadija Sesay, is a British literary activist, short story writer and poet of Sierra Leonean descent, and the publisher and managing editor of the magazine SABLE LitMag. Her work has earned her many awards and nominations, including the Cosmopolitan Woman of Achievement in 1994, Candace Woman of Achievement in 1996, The Voice Community Award in Literature in 1999 and the Millennium Woman of the Year in 2000. She is the General Secretary for African Writers Abroad and organises the Writers' HotSpot – trips for writers abroad, where she teaches creative writing and journalism courses.
Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. Poet Kwame Dawes has said, "Peepal Tree Press's position as the leading publisher of Caribbean literature, and especially of Caribbean poetry, is unassailable."
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is an English author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Winsome Pinnock FRSL is a British playwright of Jamaican heritage, who is "probably Britain's most well known black female playwright". She was described in The Guardian as "the godmother of black British playwrights".
Huddersfield Literature Festival (HLF) is an annual literary festival that takes place in March in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England.
Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Jacob Ross FRSL is a Grenada-born poet, playwright, journalist, novelist and creative writing tutor, based in the UK since 1984.
Gabriel Gbadamosi is a British poet, playwright and novelist of Irish-Nigerian descent. He is founding editor of the online literary platform WritersMosaic, an initiative of The Royal Literary Fund.
Dorothea Smartt FRSL is an English-born poet of Barbadian descent.
Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, Busby was named as president of English PEN.
Malika Booker is a British writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist, who is considered "a pioneer of the present spoken word movement" in the UK. Her writing spans different genres of storytelling, including poetry, theatre, monologue, installation and education, and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Organizations for which she has worked include Arts Council England, the BBC, British Council, Wellcome Trust, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Arvon, and Hampton Court Palace.
Joan Anim-Addo is a Grenadian-born academic, poet, playwright and publisher, who is Emeritus Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture in the English and Creative Writing Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she co-founded with Deirdre Osborne the MA Black British Literature, the world's first postgraduate degree in this field.
Susheila Nasta, MBE, Hon. FRSL, is a British critic, editor, academic and literary activist. She is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London, and founding editor of Wasafiri, the UK's leading magazine for international contemporary writing. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.
Susan Maria Andi, Hon. FRSL, better known as SuAndi, is a British performance poet, writer and arts curator. Based in North West England, she is particularly acknowledged for raising the profile of black artists in the region as well as nationally. Since 1985, she has been Cultural Director of the National Black Arts Alliance. She was appointed an OBE in 1999 for her contributions to the Black Arts sector. In 2024, she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), and was also awarded the Benson Medal, which recognises services to literature across a whole career.
Ola Opesan is a Nigerian-British writer, journalist and educationist. He published his first novel, Another Lonely Londoner (1991), under the pseudonym Gbenga Agbenugba.
Salt is a 1996 novel by Trinidadian author Earl Lovelace. It won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Helen Thomas is a poet, author and researcher whose work focuses primarily upon Black British writing, history and culture, and the medical humanities. She is the author of Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies and other critical works including Caryl Phillips (2004), Malady and Mortality: Illness, Disease and Death in Literary Culture (2016) and a free, 500-page book to support Black Lives Matter entitled Black Agents Provocateurs: 250 Years of Black British Writing, History and the Law, 1770-2020 (2020).
