Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962, who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.
Nigerian literature may be roughly defined as the literary writing by citizens of the nation of Nigeria for Nigerian readers, addressing Nigerian issues. This encompasses writers in a number of languages, including not only English but Igbo, Urhobo, Yoruba, and in the northern part of the county Hausa and Nupe. More broadly, it includes British Nigerians, Nigerian Americans and other members of the African diaspora.
Linda Ann Bellos is a British businesswoman, radical feminist and gay-rights activist. In 1981 she became the first black woman to join the Spare Rib collective. She was elected to Lambeth Borough Council in London in 1985 and was the leader of the council from 1986 to 1988.
Courttia Newland is a British writer of Jamaican and Bajan heritage.
Sudeep Sen is an Indian English poet and editor living in New Delhi.
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.
David Dabydeen is a Guyanese-born broadcaster, novelist, poet and academic. He was formerly Guyana's Ambassador to UNESCO from 1997 to 2010 and the youngest Member of the UNESCO Executive Board (1993–1997), elected by the General Council of all Member States of UNESCO. He was appointed Guyana's Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinaire to China, from 2010 to 2015. He is one of the longest serving diplomats in the history of Guyana, most of his work done in a voluntary unpaid capacity.
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer and poet from Uganda. She was awarded the 2008 Pan African Literary Forum Prize for Africana Fiction, and earlier gained recognition for her poetry, particularly her first two collections, Men Love Chocolates But They Don't Say (2002) and The Price of Memory: After the Tsunami (2006).
Leone Ross is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written three full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature.
Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present is a compilation of orature and literature by more than 200 women from Africa and the African diaspora, edited and introduced by Margaret Busby, who compared the process of assembling the volume to "trying to catch a flowing river in a calabash".
Dorothea Smartt is an English-born poet of Barbadian descent.
Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also titled 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 in the 1960s she co-founded with Clive Allison (1944–2011) the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby. 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".
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.
Deirdre Osborne is an Australian-born academic who is Reader in English Literature and Drama in the Theatre and Performance Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, and also co-convenes the MA degree in Black British Writing.
Afrobeat: New Black British Fiction was a 1999 anthology of Black British writing edited by Patsy Antoine. It was published in London by Pulp Faction.
Kabura Zakama is a Nigerian poet, veterinarian and an international development and humanitarian practitioner. His collection of poems, The Man Lived won the 1999 Association of Nigerian Authors ANA Poetry Prize. He has identified Birago Diop, Lenrie Peters, Tanure Ojaide and Kwesi Brew as the key influences on his poetry. In 1998, Zakama established Kairos Productions in order to publish upcoming writers. His poetry is well received across Africa and beyond.
Ola Opesan is a Nigerian-British writer, journalist and educationist. He published his first novel, Another Lonely Londoner (1991), under the pseudonym Gbenga Agbenugba.
