Leila Aboulela
Leila Aboulela grew up in Khartoum, Sudan where she attended the Khartoum American School and Sister School. She graduated from Khartoum University in 1985 with a degree in Economics and was awarded her Masters degree in statistics from the London School of Economics. She lived for many years in Aberdeen where she wrote most of her works while looking after her family; she currently lives and lectures in Abu Dhabi.
She was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000 for her short story The Museum and her novel The Translator was nominated for the Orange Prize in 2002, and was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times in 2006.
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Nadifa Mohamed
Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa (now in the Republic of Somaliland) in 1981 and moved as a child to England in 1986, staying permanently when war broke out in Somalia.
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She lives in London and her first novel, Black Mamba Boy, based on her father's memories of his travels in the 1930s, was published in 2010. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. It won the 2010 Betty Trask Prize. -
Hannah Pearl
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Hannah Pearl was born in East London. She is married with two children and now lives in Cambridge.
She has previously worked as a Criminology researcher, as a Development Worker with various charities and even pulled a few pints in her time.
In 2015 she was struck down by Labrynthitis, which left her feeling dizzy and virtually housebound. She has since been diagnosed with ME. Reading has allowed Hannah to escape from the reality of feeling ill. She read upwards of three hundred books during the first year of her illness. When her burgeoning eReader addiction grew to be too expensive, she decided to have a go at writing. In 2017 she won Simon and Schuster’s Books and the City #heatseeker short story competition, in partnership with Heat magaz -
Jenny Tinghui Zhang
Jenny Tinghui Zhang is a Texas-based Chinese-American writer and the author of Four Treasures of the Sky (forthcoming from Flatiron Books on April 5, 2022). She is a Kundiman fellow and graduate of the VONA/Voices and Tin House workshops. Her work has appeared in Apogee, Ninth Letter, Passages North, The Rumpus, HuffPost, The Cut, Catapult, and more.
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Malorie Blackman
An award-winning children's author, Malorie Blackman was honoured with an OBE in 2008. Her work has been adapted for TV and stage.
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Reem Gaafar
Reem Gaafar is a Sudanese public health physician, researcher, writer and mother of three boys. She is published in both fiction and non-fiction circles, contributing to issues on public health and policy, society, racism and women’s rights. Her work has appeared in African Arguments, 500 Words Magazine, Teakisi Magazine, African Feminism, Andariya Magazine, International Health Policies and Health Systems Global.
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Her short story Light of the Desert was published in the anthology I Know Two Sudans (Gipping Press, UK). Her second short short Finding Descartes was published in the anthology Relations: African and Diaspora Voices (HarperVia). Her debut novel A Mouth Full of Salt (Saqi Books, Invisible Books) won The Island Prize in 2023, was li -
John McGrath
John Peter McGrath was an English playwright and theatre theorist who took up the cause of Scottish agency in his plays. From an Irish Catholic background, McGrath was educated in Mold and, after his National Service, at St John's College, Oxford. During the early 1960s he worked for the BBC, and wrote and directed many of the early episodes of the Corporation's police series Z-Cars which began in 1962.
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He is remembered as a playwright and for his theoretical formulation of the principles of a radical, popular theatre. The 7:84 Theatre Company was established in 1971 by McGrath, his wife, Elizabeth MacLennan, and her brother, David MacLennan, and The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (1973), his best-known play, was created with the -
Stephen Kearse
Stephen Kearse is a D.C.-based author, journalist, and arts critic. His reporting and criticism have been published in the New York Times, The Nation, NPR, Pitchfork, Slate, and other outlets. His short stories have been published in The Deadlands, Joyland, Plotter, and FIYAH.
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Iain Crichton Smith
Iain Crichton Smith (Iain Mac a' Ghobhainn) was a Scottish man of letters, writing in both English and Gaelic, and a prolific author in both languages. He is known for poetry, short stories and novels.
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He was born in Glasgow, but moved to the isle of Lewis at the age of two, where he and his two brothers were brought up by their widowed mother in the small crofting town of Bayble, which also produced Derick S. Thomson. Educated at the University of Aberdeen, Crichton Smith took a degree in English, and after serving in the National Service Army Education Corps, went on to become a teacher.
He taught in Clydebank, Dumbarton and Oban from 1952, retiring to become a full-time writer in 1977, although he already had many novels and poems publish -
Hanif Kureishi
Hanif Kureishi is the author of novels (including The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album and Intimacy), story collections (Love in a Blue Time, Midnight All Day, The Body), plays (including Outskirts, Borderline and Sleep With Me), and screenplays (including My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic and Venus). Among his other publications are the collection of essays Dreaming and Scheming, The Word and the Bomb and the memoir My Ear at His Heart.
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Kureishi was born in London to a Pakistani father and an English mother. His father, Rafiushan, was from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947. He came to Britain to study law but soon abandoned his studies. After meeting and marryi -
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a revolutionary Black feminist. Lorde's poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s — in Langston Hughes' 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in several foreign anthologies; and in black literary magazines. During this time, she was politically active in civil rights, anti-war, and feminist movements. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet's Press and edited by Diane di Prima, a former classmate and friend from Hunter College High School. Dudley Randall, a poet and critic, asserted in his review of the book that Lorde "does not wave a black flag, but her blackness is there, implicit, in the bone."
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Her second volume, Cables to Rage (1970), which was mainly written during her tenure at To -
Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar was born in New York City, where his father was working for the Libyan delegation to the United Nations. When he was three years old, his family went back to Tripoli, Libya, where he spent his early childhood. Due to political persecutions by the Ghaddafi regime, in 1979 his father was accused of being a reactionary to the Libyan revolutionary regime and was forced to flee the country with his family. They lived in exile in Egypt where Hisham and his brother completed their schooling in Cairo. In 1986 he moved to London, United Kingdom, where he continued his studies and received a degree in architecture. In 1990, while he was still in London, his father, a political dissident, was kidnapped in Cairo. He has been reported missi
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Abdulrazak Gurnah
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 in Zanzibar and lives in England, where he teaches at the University of Kent. The most famous of his novels are Paradise, shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea, longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".
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Zakes Mda
Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda, a novelist, poet and playwright.
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Although he spent his early childhood in Soweto (where he knew political figures such as Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela) he had to finish his education in Lesotho where his father went into exile since 1963. This change of setting also meant a change of language for Mda: from isiXhosa to Sesotho. Consequently Mda preferred to write his first plays in English.
His first play, We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, won the first Amstel Playwright of the Year Award in 1978, a feat he repeated the following year. He worked as a bank clerk, a teacher and in marketing before the publication of We Shall Sing for the Fatherland and O -
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Spent part of her childhood in England. She began her education there, but concluded her A-levels in a missionary school back home, in the town of Mutare. She later studied medicine at Cambridge University, but became homesick and returned home as Zimbabwe's black-majority rule began in 1980.
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She took up psychology at the University of Zimbabwe, of whose drama group she was a member. She also held down a two-year job as a copywriter at a marketing agency. This early writing experience gave her an avenue for expression: she wrote numerous plays, such as The Lost of the Soil, and then joined the theatre group Zambuko, and participated in the production of two plays, Katshaa and Mavambo.
In 1985, Dangarembga published a short story in Sweden cal -
Fadia Faqir
Fadia Faqir (b. 1956) is a British Arab writer based in Durham, UK. Her work was translated into fifteen languages and published in eighteen countries. She is a Writing Fellow at St Aidan's College, Durham University, where she teaches creative writing.
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Faqir’s work is written entirely in English and is the subject of much ongoing academic research and discussion, particularly for its ‘translation’ of aspects of Arab culture. It is recognised for its stylistic invention and its incorporation of issues to do with Third World women’s lives, migration, and cultural in-betweeness -
David Greig
David Greig is a Scottish dramatist. He was born in Edinburgh in 1969 and brought up in Nigeria. He studied drama at Bristol University and is now a well-known writer and director of plays. He has been commissioned by the Royal Court, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company and was Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh from 2015 until 2025, when he left to return to writing.
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His first play was produced in Glasgow in 1992 and he has written many plays since, produced worldwide. In 1990 he co-founded Suspect Culture Theatre Group with Graham Eatough in Glasgow.
His translations include Camus' Caligula (2003), Candide 2000, and When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, based on a book by Raja Shehadeh. Danmy 306 + Me -
Gregory Burke
Gregory Burke (born 1968) is a Scottish playwright from Rosyth, Fife, Scotland.
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Gregory Burke's first play was Gagarin Way, set in the factories of West Fife. His play, Black Watch, for the National Theatre of Scotland, debuted at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival, meeting with critical acclaim, and has since been performed throughout Scotland and has also toured theatres in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. He has also written Occy Eyes, The Straits, Unsecured, On Tour, Liar and Shell shocked. His most recent play was Hoors, which opened at the Traverse Theatre on 1 May 2009.
His play Black Watch won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Play, the South Bank Show Theatre Award in 2007 and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best -
Rajaa Alsanea
Rajaa Alsanea (Arabic: رجاء الصانع; variant spelling Rajaa al-Sanea)is a Saudi writer who became famous through her novel Girls of Riyadh, or Banat al-Riyadh. The book was first published in Lebanon in 2005 and in English in 2007. The book was long-listed for the Dublin Literary Award in 2009. Al-Sanea grew up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the daughter of a family of doctors. She currently lives in Chicago where she is a dental graduate student. She received her bachelor's degree in Dentistry from King Saud University in 2005. Her novel and lifestyle have caused controversy especially among the conservative sections of the Saudi society, but more liberal-minded individuals consider her a role model.
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Filipa Fonseca Silva
Filipa Fonseca Silva was born in a small town called Barreiro, just across from Lisbon, Portugal, in 1979.
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She graduated in Communication from Universidade Católica Portuguesa and worked as an advertising copywriter until 2017. She is now a fulltime writer.
Her debut novel is called Thirty Something – Nothing’s How We Dreamed It Would Be and it made her the only Portuguese author to reach Amazon Top100 in Women's Fiction. It was followed by The Strange Year of Vanessa M (2013), Things a Mother Discovers (and no one talks about), Taxi Tales (2017), I Hate My Boss (2018), The Elevator (finalist of Bertrand Book of the Year 2022), What if I Die Tomorrow? (finalist of Bertrand Book of the Year 2023) and Brave Green World (June 2024).
She likes to -
James Robertson
James Robertson (born 1958) is a Scottish writer who grew up in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire. He is the author of several short story and poetry collections, and has published four novels: The Fanatic, Joseph Knight, The Testament of Gideon Mack, and And the Land Lay Still. Joseph Knight was named both the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year and the Saltire Society Book of the Year in 2003/04. The Testament of Gideon Mack was long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. And the Land Lay Still was awarded the Saltire Society Book of the Year Award in 2010. Robertson has also established an independent publishing imprint called Kettillonia, which produces occasional pamphlets and books of poetry and short prose, and he is a co-founder and
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Yejide Kilanko
A writer of fiction and poetry, Kilanko’s debut novel, Daughters Who Walk This Path, a Canadian national bestseller, was longlisted for the 2016 Nigeria Literature Prize.
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Her work includes a novella, Chasing Butterflies (2015), two children’s picture books, There Is An Elephant In My Wardrobe (2019), and Juba and The Fireball (2020). Her short fiction is in the anthology, New Orleans Review 2017: The African Literary Hustle. Her latest novel, A Good Name, is available now
Kilanko lives in Ontario, Canada, where she practices as a social worker. -
Virginie Grimaldi
(Du site officiel de l'auteur) :
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Je suis née le en 1977 près de Bordeaux, où je vis toujours.
J’ai commencé à dévorer les livres dès que j’ai su lire. La Bibliothèque rose, la Bibliothèque verte, puis de nombreux romans qui me faisaient vivre mille et une vies.
J’avais huit ans quand j’ai écrit mon premier roman sur un cahier de brouillon vert au dos duquel figuraient des tables de multiplication. Il parlait d’amour, de mer et d’un soleil qui mettait trente pages à se coucher.
En sixième, je répondais « Écrire des livres » à la question « Que voulez-vous faire plus tard ? » sur les fiches que l’on remplissait en début d’année. Pas à chaque fois, parce qu’il m’est aussi arrivé de vouloir être styliste. Ça n’a pas duré longtemps : tout le monde v -
Ayisha Malik
Ayisha is a British Muslim, lifelong Londoner, and lover of books. She read English Literature and went on to complete an MA in Creative Writing (though told most of her family it was an MA in English Literature – Creative Writing is not a subject, after all.) She has spent various spells teaching, photocopying, volunteering and being a publicist. Now, when she isn’t searching for a jar of Nutella in her cupboards, she divides her time between writing and being managing editor at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.
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Ayisha is one of WH Smith's Fresh Talent picks, Winter 2016.
'Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged' is her first novel and will be published by Bonnier in Jan 2016.
'Fun, Fresh and Funny' – MHAIRI MCFARLANE, bestselling author of 'You Had Me A -
Jokha Alharthi جوخة الحارثي
Jokha al-Harthi (Arabic: جوخة الحارثي; born July 1978) is an Omani writer and academic. She was educated in Oman and in the United Kingdom. She obtained her PhD in classical Arabic literature from Edinburgh University. She is currently an associate professor in the Arabic department at Sultan Qaboos University.
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al-Harthi has published three collections of short stories and three novels (Manamat, Sayyidat el-Qamar and Narinjah). She has also authored academic works. Her work has been translated into English, Serbian, Korean, Italian, and German and published in Banipal magazine. She was also one of eight participants in the 2011 IPAF Nadwa (writers' workshop). al-Harthi won the Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature, for her no -
Ibtisam Azem
Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist and journalist. She has published two novels in Arabic. The Book of Disappearance has been published in English, German, and Italian. Her first short story collection will be published in 2024. She lives in New York.
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Waldson Souza
Waldson Souza é brasiliense, escritor, roteirista e doutorando em literatura na UnB. Sua pesquisa acadêmica possui foco em temas como afrofuturismo, ficção especulativa, autoria negra, representação e a obra de Octavia E. Butler. É autor de “Oceanïc” (Dame Blanche, 2019) e de “O homem que não transbordava” (Plutão Livros, 2021), finalista do Prêmio Odisseia de Literatura Fantástica 2022. Já publicou nas revistas Piauí e Quatro Cinco Um. Em 2021, organizou a coletânea “Raízes do amanhã: 8 contos afrofuturistas” (Editora Gutenberg e Plutão Livros).
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Mohammed El-Kurd
MOHAMMED EL-KURD is an internationally touring and award-winning poet, writer, journalist, and organizer from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine.
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In 2021, He was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine.
He is best known for his role as a co-founder of the #SaveSheikhJarrah movement. His work has been featured in numerous international outlets and he has appeared repeatedly as a commentator on major TV networks.
Currently, El-Kurd serves as the first-ever Palestine Correspondent for The Nation. His first published essay in this role, "A Night with Palestine's Defenders of the Mountain," was shortlisted for the 2022 One World Media Print Award.
RIFQA, his debut collection of poetry, was published by Haymarket -
Banu Mushtaq
Banu Mushtaq (ಬಾನು ಮುಷ್ತಾಕ್, born 1948) is an activist, lawyer and writer from the southern Indian state of Karnataka. She writes in the Kannada language and her works have also been published in Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and, most recently, English.
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Reem Gaafar
Reem Gaafar is a Sudanese public health physician, researcher, writer and mother of three boys. She is published in both fiction and non-fiction circles, contributing to issues on public health and policy, society, racism and women’s rights. Her work has appeared in African Arguments, 500 Words Magazine, Teakisi Magazine, African Feminism, Andariya Magazine, International Health Policies and Health Systems Global.
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Her short story Light of the Desert was published in the anthology I Know Two Sudans (Gipping Press, UK). Her second short short Finding Descartes was published in the anthology Relations: African and Diaspora Voices (HarperVia). Her debut novel A Mouth Full of Salt (Saqi Books, Invisible Books) won The Island Prize in 2023, was li -
Elyse Durham
Elyse Durham is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her fiction has appeared or is upcoming in the Cimarron Review, Image Journal, the Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She is an Elizabeth George grantee and has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Glen Arbor Arts Center, and The Mount, the home of Edith Wharton. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her husband, who is a Greek Orthodox priest.
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Matt Cain
Matt Cain is a writer, broadcaster, and a leading commentator on LGBTQ+ issues. He was Channel 4’s first Culture Editor, Editor-In-Chief of Attitude magazine, has written for all the national newspapers and appeared on BBC Breakfast, Lorraine, Good Morning Britain, The Today Programme, Front Row and Woman's Hour.
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Matt is also an ambassador for Manchester Pride and a patron of LGBT+ History Month. In 2021 he received an honorary doctorate from Bolton University and in 2023 he addressed the Cambridge Union. In the New Year's Honours List 2025 Matt was awarded an MBE for services to LGBTQ+ culture.
Matt's breakthrough work of fiction, The Madonna Of Bolton, became Unbound’s fastest crowdfunded novel ever before it was published in 2018. In 2021 -
Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a Mauritanian citizen who has been imprisoned at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp since August 4, 2002. In 2005, he wrote the nonfiction book Guantánamo Diary , which was published 10 years later.
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Mihret Sibhat
Mihret Sibhat was born and raised in a small town in western Ethiopia before moving to California when she was seventeen. A graduate of California State University, Northridge, and the University of Minnesota’s MFA program, she was a 2019 A Public Space Fellow and a 2019 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grantee. In a previous life, she was a waitress, a nanny, an occasional shoe shiner, a propagandist, and a terrible gospel singer. She’s currently a miserable Arsenal fan.
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Michela Wrong
Half-Italian, half-British, Michela Wrong was born in 1961. She grew up in London and took a degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge and a diploma in journalism at Cardiff.
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She joined Reuters news agency in the early 1980s and was posted as a foreign correspondent to Italy, France and Ivory Coast. She became a freelance journalist in 1994, when she moved to then-Zaire and found herself covering both the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda and the final days of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko for the BBC and Reuters. She later moved to Kenya, where she spent four years covering east, west and central Africa for the Financial Times newspaper.
In 2000 she published her first book, "In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz", the story of M -
Suki Kim
Suki Kim is the author of the award-winning novel The Interpreter and the recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Open Society fellowships. She has been traveling to North Korea as a journalist since 2002, and her essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, and the New York Review of Books. Born and raised in Seoul, she lives in New York.
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Her debut novel The Interpreter is a murder mystery about a young Korean American woman, Suzy Park, living in New York City and searching for answers as to why her shopkeeper parents were murdered. Kim took a short term job as an interpreter in New York City when working on the novel to look into the life of an interpreter. The book received positive critic reviews and was named a ru -
Nada Awar Jarrar
Nada Awar Jarrar was born in Lebanon to an Australian mother and a Lebanese father. She has lived in London, Paris, Sydney and Washington DC and is currently based in Beirut where she lives with her husband and daughter. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, The Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and Lebanon's English language newspaper, The Daily Star. Her first novel, Somewhere, Home won the Commonwealth Best First Book award for Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
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Renan Silva
Renan Silva é professor, roteirista, poeta e pós-graduado em Escrita Criativa. A voz que ninguém escutou é seu primeiro romance, ganhando o prêmio Kindle de literatura 2023.
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Abir Mukherjee
Abir Mukherjee is the Times bestselling author of the Sam Wyndham series of crime novels set in Raj era India. His debut, A Rising Man, won the CWA Endeavour Dagger for best historical crime novel of 2017 and was shortlisted for the MWA Edgar for best novel. His second novel, A Necessary Evil, won the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing and was a Zoe Ball Book Club pick. His third novel, Smoke and Ashes, was chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 Best Crime & Thriller Novels since 1945. Abir grew up in Scotland and now lives in London with his wife and two sons.
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Gregory Burke
Gregory Burke (born 1968) is a Scottish playwright from Rosyth, Fife, Scotland.
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Gregory Burke's first play was Gagarin Way, set in the factories of West Fife. His play, Black Watch, for the National Theatre of Scotland, debuted at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival, meeting with critical acclaim, and has since been performed throughout Scotland and has also toured theatres in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. He has also written Occy Eyes, The Straits, Unsecured, On Tour, Liar and Shell shocked. His most recent play was Hoors, which opened at the Traverse Theatre on 1 May 2009.
His play Black Watch won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Play, the South Bank Show Theatre Award in 2007 and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best -
Lemn Sissay
Lemn Sissay OBE (born 21 May 1967), is a British author and broadcaster.
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Bernardine Evaristo
Bernardine Evaristo is the Anglo-Nigerian award-winning author of several books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora: past, present, real, imagined. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize in 2019. Her writing also spans short fiction, reviews, essays, drama and writing for BBC radio. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. She was made an MBE in 2009. As a literary activist for inclusion Bernardine has founded a number of successful initiatives, including Spread the Word writer development agency (1995-ongoing); the Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets of colour (2007-2017) and the Brunel International African P
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David Greig
David Greig is a Scottish dramatist. He was born in Edinburgh in 1969 and brought up in Nigeria. He studied drama at Bristol University and is now a well-known writer and director of plays. He has been commissioned by the Royal Court, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company and was Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh from 2015 until 2025, when he left to return to writing.
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His first play was produced in Glasgow in 1992 and he has written many plays since, produced worldwide. In 1990 he co-founded Suspect Culture Theatre Group with Graham Eatough in Glasgow.
His translations include Camus' Caligula (2003), Candide 2000, and When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, based on a book by Raja Shehadeh. Danmy 306 + Me -
Waldson Souza
Waldson Souza é brasiliense, escritor, roteirista e doutorando em literatura na UnB. Sua pesquisa acadêmica possui foco em temas como afrofuturismo, ficção especulativa, autoria negra, representação e a obra de Octavia E. Butler. É autor de “Oceanïc” (Dame Blanche, 2019) e de “O homem que não transbordava” (Plutão Livros, 2021), finalista do Prêmio Odisseia de Literatura Fantástica 2022. Já publicou nas revistas Piauí e Quatro Cinco Um. Em 2021, organizou a coletânea “Raízes do amanhã: 8 contos afrofuturistas” (Editora Gutenberg e Plutão Livros).
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Lauren Francis-Sharma
Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of "'Til the Well Runs Dry" and "Book of the Little Axe," which will debut May 2020. She is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, the proprietor of D.C. Writers Room, and a MacDowell Fellow. Lauren, a former corporate lawyer, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan Law School.
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Zakes Mda
Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda, a novelist, poet and playwright.
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Although he spent his early childhood in Soweto (where he knew political figures such as Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela) he had to finish his education in Lesotho where his father went into exile since 1963. This change of setting also meant a change of language for Mda: from isiXhosa to Sesotho. Consequently Mda preferred to write his first plays in English.
His first play, We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, won the first Amstel Playwright of the Year Award in 1978, a feat he repeated the following year. He worked as a bank clerk, a teacher and in marketing before the publication of We Shall Sing for the Fatherland and O -
Fadia Faqir
Fadia Faqir (b. 1956) is a British Arab writer based in Durham, UK. Her work was translated into fifteen languages and published in eighteen countries. She is a Writing Fellow at St Aidan's College, Durham University, where she teaches creative writing.
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Faqir’s work is written entirely in English and is the subject of much ongoing academic research and discussion, particularly for its ‘translation’ of aspects of Arab culture. It is recognised for its stylistic invention and its incorporation of issues to do with Third World women’s lives, migration, and cultural in-betweeness -
Ayisha Malik
Ayisha is a British Muslim, lifelong Londoner, and lover of books. She read English Literature and went on to complete an MA in Creative Writing (though told most of her family it was an MA in English Literature – Creative Writing is not a subject, after all.) She has spent various spells teaching, photocopying, volunteering and being a publicist. Now, when she isn’t searching for a jar of Nutella in her cupboards, she divides her time between writing and being managing editor at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.
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Ayisha is one of WH Smith's Fresh Talent picks, Winter 2016.
'Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged' is her first novel and will be published by Bonnier in Jan 2016.
'Fun, Fresh and Funny' – MHAIRI MCFARLANE, bestselling author of 'You Had Me A -
Fflur Dafydd
Fflur Dafydd is a novelist from Carmarthen who publishes in both Welsh and English. Since publishing her first novel, Lliwiau Liw Nos in 2005, she has published six fiction volumes. Two of her Welsh-language novels, Atyniad (Y Lolfa, 2006) and Y Llyfrgell (Y Lolfa, 2009) have been awarded the major fiction awards at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, the Prose Medal (2006) and the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize (2009), making her the only female writer, and the youngest writer to date to have won both awards. Her first English language novel, Twenty Thousand Saints (Alcemi, 2008) – an innovative reworking and adaptation of the Welsh-language novel, Atyniad, also won the inaugural Oxfam Hay Emerging Writer of the Year Award at the Hay Festival 20
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Peter Kimani
PETER KIMANI is a leading Kenyan journalist and author of, most recently, Dance of the Jakaranda, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The novel was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the US and long-listed for the inaugural Big Book Awards in the UK. He has taught at Amherst College and the University of Houston and is presently based at Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications. Nairobi Noir is his latest work.
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Diana Abu-Jaber
Diana Abu-Jaber is the award-winning author of Life Without A Recipe, Origin, Crescent, Arabian Jazz, and The Language of Baklava. Her writing has appeared in Good Housekeeping, Ms., Salon, Vogue, Gourmet, the New York Times, The Nation, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. She divides her time between Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Portland, Oregon.
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Rohini Mohan
Rohini Mohan is an Indian journalist who writes on politics, environment and human rights in South Asia.
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In the last 10 years, she has reported for Al Jazeera, Tehelka magazine, The Caravan magazine, The New York Times, The Hindu, Outlook Traveller, and news channel CNN-IBN. She has lived in New Delhi, Chennai and New York, and is now based in Bangalore, India.
Rohini has a Masters in political journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York. She speaks four South Asian languages: Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada.
Her first book is THE SEASONS OF TROUBLE, a nonfiction account of three people caught up in the aftermath of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. -
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
KHADIJA ABDALLA BAJABER is a Mombasa-born poet and novelist with a degree in journalism. A Kenyan of Hadrami descent, she writes about the ill-documented history of the Hadrami diaspora. Her work has been published in Brainstorm Kenya and the Enkare Review, and she is the assistant poetry editor for the Panorama Travel Journal’s East African Issue. She lives in Mombasa, Kenya.
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J. Nozipo Maraire
J. Nozipo Maraire (born in 1966) is a Zimbabwean doctor and writer. She is the author of Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter. She is a practicing neurosurgeon in Klamath Falls, Oregon. She got her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and then attended The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Soon after she entered a neurosurgery internship at Yale. She currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
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Binyavanga Wainaina
Binyavanga Wainaina was a short story writer, essayist, and journalist.
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He was the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya, and he directed the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.
He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and wrote for many journals, including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, One Story, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper's, Granta, the Sunday Times, and the New York Times. -
Mai Al-Nakib
Mai Al-Nakib is the author of An Unlasting Home, a novel published by Mariner Books/HarperCollins in 2022. Her collection of short stories, The Hidden Light of Objects, published by Bloomsbury, won the Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award in 2014. Her short stories have appeared in various publications, including, Ninth Letter, The First Line, After the Pause, and World Literature Today. She holds a PhD in English from Brown University and teaches English and comparative literature at Kuwait University.
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Kasia Boddy
Kasia Boddy teaches in the English Department at University College London. She has written extensively on twentieth-century American literature.
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Arif Anwar
ARIF ANWAR was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh, just miles from the Bay of Bengal. He previously worked for BRAC, one of the world’s largest non-governmental organizations, on issues of poverty alleviation, and for UNICEF Myanmar on public health issues. Arif has a PhD in education from the University of Toronto. He currently lives in Toronto with his wife, Si (Sandra) Lian. The Storm is his first novel.
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Penelope Bush
Penelope Bush trained and worked as a tapestry weaver, but always knew that one day she would write.
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She lives in West Sussex with her husband and son and elderly cat. She hides away in an old caravan to do her writing, where the only distraction is the occasional pheasant wandering past. Now and again, the family reclaim the caravan and it is towed down the coast to Dorset, where many happy hours are spent looking for fossils. -
Rania Mamoun
Rania Ali Musa Mamoun (born 1979) is a Sudanese journalist, novelist and writer. She was born in the city of Wad Medani in east-central Sudan, and was educated at the University of Gezira. As a journalist, she is involved in both print media and television. She edits the culture page of the journal al-Thaqafi, writes a column for the newspaper al-Adwaa, and presents a cultural programme on Gezira State TV.
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As an author, Mamoun has published a book of short stories ("The Thirteen Months of Sunrise") 2009, and a novel ("Green Flash") 2006. One of her stories ("The Thirteen Months of Sunrise") has appeared in English translation in Banipal magazine, and she has many stories & articles has been translated to English & French. Mamoun was the reci -
Oonya Kempadoo
Oonya Kempadoo is a writer who was born in Sussex, England in 1966 of Guyanese parents. She was brought up in Guyana and has since lived in Europe and various islands in the Caribbean.
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Her first novel, Buxton Spice, was published to great acclaim in 1998, and was nominated for the 2000 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her second book, Tide Running (Picador, 2001), set in Plymouth, Tobago, is the story of young brothers Cliff and Ossie.
Oonya Kempadoo has studied art in Amsterdam and has lived in Trinidad, St. Lucia, Tobago, and now lives in Grenada.
She was named a Great Talent for the Twenty-First Century by the Orange Prize judges and is a winner of the Casa de las Americas Prize. -
Peter Lovenheim
Peter Lovenheim is an author and journalist whose articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Parade, Moment magazine, The Washington Post, and other publications.
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His book, In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time, won a Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the First Annual Zócalo Public Square Book Prize.
Lovenheim holds a degree in journalism from Boston University and in law from Cornell Law School. He teaches narrative non-fiction at The Writers Center in Bethesda, MD and splits his time between his hometown of Rochester, NY, and Washington, DC.