Pascale Petit, is a French-born British poet of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. She was born in Paris and grew up in France and Wales. She trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art and was a visual artist for the first part of her life. She has travelled widely, particularly in the Peruvian and Venezuelan Amazon and India.
Dame Marina Sarah Warner, is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the New Statesman, Sunday Times, and Vogue. She has been a visiting professor, given lectures and taught on the faculties of many universities.
John Burnside FRSL FRSE was a Scottish writer. He was one of four poets to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for one book. In Burnside's case it was for his 2011 collection, Black Cat Bone. In 2023, he won the David Cohen Prize.
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."
Julia Copus FRSL is a British poet, biographer and children's writer.
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.
Peter Kenrick Florence CBE is a British festival director, most notable for founding the Hay Festival with his father and mother, Norman Florence and Rhoda Lewis, funding the first festival with winnings from a poker game.
Daljit Nagra is a British poet whose debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover! – a title alluding to W. H. Auden's Look, Stranger!, D. H. Lawrence's Look! We Have Come Through! and by epigraph also to Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" – was published by Faber in February 2007. Nagra's poems relate to the experience of Indians born in the UK, and often employ language that imitates the English spoken by Indian immigrants whose first language is Punjabi, which some have termed "Punglish". He currently works part-time at JFS School in Kenton, London, and visits schools, universities and festivals where he performs his work. He was appointed chair of the Royal Society of Literature in November 2020. He is a professor of creative writing at Brunel University London.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British 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.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika FRSL is a British-Nigerian writer of novels, short stories and essays and an active member of the literary community, particularly supporting and amplifying young writers and female voices. She is the author of two well-received novels, In Dependence (2009) and Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016), as well as the non-fiction collection Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora (2022), and her writing has appeared in publications including Granta, Transition, Guernica, and OZY, and previously served as founding Books Editor of OZY. Manyika's work also features in the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Wasafiri is a quarterly British literary magazine covering international contemporary writing. Founded in 1984, the magazine derives its name from a Swahili word meaning "travellers" that is etymologically linked with the Arabic word "safari". The magazine holds that many of those who created the literatures in which it is particularly interested "...have all in some sense been cultural travellers either through migration, transportation or else, in the more metaphorical sense of seeking an imagined cultural 'home'." Funded by the Arts Council England, Wasafiri is "a journal of post-colonial literature that pays attention to the wealth of Black and diasporic writers worldwide. It is Britain's only international magazine for Black British, African, Asian and Caribbean literatures."
Jacob Ross FRSL is a Grenada-born poet, playwright, journalist, novelist and creative writing tutor, based in the UK since 1984.
Joelle Taylor RSL is a poet, playwright and author. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
Irenosen Iseghohi Okojie FRSL is a Nigerian-born short story and novel writer working in London. Her stories incorporate speculative elements and also make use of her West African heritage. Her first novel, Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask Award in 2016, and her story "Grace Jones" won the 2020 Caine Prize for African Writing. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.
Alastair Neil Robertson Niven Hon FRSL is an English literary scholar and author. He has written books on D. H. Lawrence, Raja Rao, and Mulk Raj Anand, and has been Director General of The Africa Centre, Director of Literature at the Arts Council of Great Britain and of the British Council, a principal of Cumberland Lodge, and president of English PEN. In 2021, Niven was chosen as the recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature, awarded for exceptional contribution to literature.
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.
Claire Armitstead FRSL is a British journalist and author. She is Associate Editor (Culture) at The Guardian, where she has worked since 1992. She is also a cultural commentator on literature and the arts, and makes appearances on radio and television, as well as leading workshops and chairing literary events in the UK and at international festivals. She has judged literary competitions including the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the PEN Pinter Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Ian Humphreys is a British poet. His debut collection, Zebra, published in 2019 with Nine Arches Press, was nominated for the Portico Prize. His second poetry collection, Tormentil, won a 2022 Royal Society of Literature Literature Matters Award.
Sandra Agard Hon. FRSL is a British storyteller, writer, literary consultant and cultural historian. She is a published author of short stories and poetry, and for more than 40 years has performed her work, including plays, within the UK as well as internationally. She has worked in libraries as a literature development officer, as well as in art galleries and with community groups in many other settings. In 2022, she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) and was the recipient of the RSL's Benson Medal.
Ruth Borthwick, Hon. FRSL, is a British arts administrator, literature executive and educator, who for more than three decades has worked with writers in bookselling and publishing, and as an advocate for literature in the UK and internationally. In 2018, she was elected an Honorary Fellow by the Royal Society of Literature, rewarding "significant contribution to the advancement of literature". Formerly chief executive and artistic director of the Arvon Foundation for ten years (2009–2019), she has been Chair of English PEN since 2021.
