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.
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
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Sairish Hussain
Sairish Hussain is a Bradford based author and Lecturer in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Family Tree, was published by HarperCollins and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Portico Prize and The Diverse Book Awards. It was also longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and winner of Calibre Audio's 'Hidden Gem' Prize. Sairish was selected by Kei Miller as one of ten ‘unmissable writers working in the UK’ for the International Literature Showcase 2021. She was one of the finalists in the Women’s Prize & Good Housekeeping Futures Award, an initiative which celebrates the most promising emerging female authors today. Her second novel, Hidden Fires, was published in 2024.
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Madhuri Vijay
Madhuri Vijay was born in Bangalore. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her writing has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative Magazine and Salon, among other publications. The Far Field is her first book.
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Aminatta Forna
Aminatta’s books have been translated into eighteen languages. Her essays have appeared in Freeman’s, Granta, The Guardian, LitHub, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Observer and Vogue. She has written stories for BBC radio and written and presented television documentaries including “The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu” (BBC Television, 2009) and “Girl Rising” (CNN, 2013).
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Aminatta is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy. She has acted as judge for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Bailey Prize for Women’s Fiction, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Caine Prize and the International Man Booker Prize.
In 2003 Aminatta established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in a village in Sierra -
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.
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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. -
Aminatta Forna
Aminatta’s books have been translated into eighteen languages. Her essays have appeared in Freeman’s, Granta, The Guardian, LitHub, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Observer and Vogue. She has written stories for BBC radio and written and presented television documentaries including “The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu” (BBC Television, 2009) and “Girl Rising” (CNN, 2013).
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Aminatta is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy. She has acted as judge for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Bailey Prize for Women’s Fiction, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Caine Prize and the International Man Booker Prize.
In 2003 Aminatta established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in a village in Sierra -
Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Jonathan Buckley
Jonathan Buckley was born in Birmingham, grew up in Dudley, and studied English Literature at Sussex University, where he stayed on to take an MA. From there he moved to King’s College, London, where he researched the work of the Scottish poet/artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. After working as a university tutor, stage hand, maker of theatrical sets and props, bookshop manager, decorator and builder, he was commissioned in 1987 to write the Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto.
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He went on to become an editorial director at Rough Guides, and to write further guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, as well as contributing to the Rough Guide to Classical Music and Rough Guide to Opera.
His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published by -
Claire Cameron
A new book, March 25, 2025 — HOW TO SURVIVE A BEAR ATTACK: A Memoir
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Also, author of The Last Neanderthal, The Bear and The Line Painter. -
Amit Majmudar
Amit Majmudar is the author of The Abundance, Partitions, chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best debut novels of 2011 and by Booklist as one of the year’s ten best works of historical fiction. His poetry has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Best American Poetry 2011. A radiologist, he lives in Columbus, Ohio.
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Shubnum Khan
Shubnum Khan is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author. The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is her international debut and an NYT Editors Pick. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern etc. She lives in Durban by the sea.
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Ellen Banda-Aaku
Ellen Banda-Aaku was born in Woking Surrey in 1965. The middle child of three she grew up in Zambia and has lived and worked in Ghana, South Africa, the UK and Zambia.
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In 2004 she won the Macmillan Writers’ Prize for Africa for Wandi’s Little Voice, a book for children. In 2007, her short story, Sozi’s Box, was the overall winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Her novel "Patchwork," published 2011, won the Penguin Prize for African Writing.
She has a BA in Public Administration from the University of Zambia, an MA in Financial Management with Social Policy from Middlesex University and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She’s currently is based in the UK where she lives with her two children Saada -
Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels. Her work has been translated into fifty languages. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She is a member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). An advocate for women's rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice a TED Global speaker, each time receivin
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Canisia Lubrin
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her books include the acclaimed and awards-nominated Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst, nominated for ten prizes, finalist for the Trillium and Governor General’s awards for English poetry, and winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Derek Walcott Prize. Lubrin was also awarded the 2021 Joseph Stauffer Prize in literature by the Canada Council for the Arts. Poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart, she is the Creative Writing MFA Coordinator in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. In 2021, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell prize for poetry. Lubrin’s debut work of fiction is Code Noir: Metamorphoses.
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Born in St. -
Shubhangi Swarup
Shubhangi Swarup is a journalist and educationist. She was awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship for Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and has also won awards for gender sensitivity in feature writing. She lives in Mumbai.
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Ama Asantewa Diaka
Ama Asantewa Diaka is a Ghanaian poet, storyteller, and spoken word artist who performs as Poetra Asantewa. She is the author of the chapbook, You Too Will Know Me, and the debut poetry collection, Woman, Eat Me Whole, and her poems and fiction have appeared in print and online. She recently completed an MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Ghana.
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Sanam Mahloudji
Sanam Mahloudji is an American writer born in Tehran and based in London. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for her fiction and was nominated for a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Idaho Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel The Persians has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Best of the Best” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her most recent work is an essay about losing her father, Notes on Grief, and Mama’s Sleeping Scarf, a children’s book written as Nwa Grace-James. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the Unit
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Eloghosa Osunde
Eloghosa Osunde is a Nigerian writer and multidisciplinary artist.
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Natasha Brown
Natasha Brown is a writer who lives in London. Assembly is her first novel.
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Iris Mwanza
Iris Mwanza is a Zambian-American author and gender equality advocate. Born and raised in Zambia, early exposure to inequality has been a driving force in her life - from becoming a lawyer, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on women and children’s rights, a career fighting for gender equality, and now a thriller with gender equality as its heart.
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Iris has spent an inordinate amount of time studying and has law degrees from Cornell University and the University of Zambia, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Her day job is Deputy Director of the Women in Leadership team in the Gender Equality Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and her night job is to write. Her -
Priscilla Morris
Priscilla Morris is a British author of Cornish-Bosnian parentage, who lives in Monaghan, Ireland. She grew up in London, spending her childhood summers in Sarajevo. Black Butterflies, her debut novel, was inspired by family history and tells one woman's story of disintegration, loss, resilience and hope. When not writing, Priscilla teaches creative writing online and runs writing retreats in Catalonia. Find out more on www.priscillamorris.org
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I wrote my debut novel BLACK BUTTERFLIES (2022) to understand the siege that devastated Sarajevo from 1992-1996. It turned many of my maternal relatives, including my grandparents, into refugees. It's inspired by their stories and, in particular, by the extraordinary tale of my great-uncle, the Bosn -
Mirinae Lee
Mirinae Lee was born and grew up in Seoul. Her debut novel, '8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster,' has been longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, and shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. '8 Lives' is inspired by Lee's great-aunt, one of the oldest women to escape alone from North Korea. Its translations continue to meet readers worldwide, including in the US, the UK, Italy, Denmark, Greece, Romania, South Korea, Spain, and Switzerland. She lives in Hong Kong with her husband and children.
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Foluso Agbaje
Foluso Agbaje is a British-Nigerian writer exploring how choices and connections shape who we are. After studying at the Faber Academy, she completed her debut novel, The Parlour Wife. Her background in Accounting, an MSc in Management and Human Resources from LSE, and work in Finance and HR offer perspectives that continue to inform her storytelling. Away from her desk, Foluso enjoys visiting bookshops and museums, watching period dramas, and seeking inspiration in new places.
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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.
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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. -
Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn
Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of the novels PATSY (June 4, 2019) and HERE COMES THE SUN (Liveright, 2016), which won the Lambda Literary Award, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award.
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HERE COMES THE SUN was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and received “Best Book of the Year” nods from NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Entertainment Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, BuzzFeed, Vice, and Kirkus Reviews, among others. It was named one of the best books to read in summer 2016 by the New York Times, NPR, BBC, O, The Oprah Magazine, E -
Selçuk Altun
Selçuk Altun (born 1950) is a Turkish writer, publisher and retired banking executive.
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Born in Artvin, Turkey in 1950, he graduated from the Management Department of Boğaziçi University. He began work in the finance sector in 1974 and was chairman of Yapi Kredi Bank and executive board director of the YKY (Yapı Kredi Publications), where he amassed a personal library of 9,000 volumes and published works by Louise Glück and John Ashbery, before he retired in 2004 to pursue his full timewriting career.
“My goal was to write a book by the age of 50,” he says. “Before that, I knew I needed to read, so I read some 4,000 books before I sat down to write. That, more than anything, gave me the confidence I needed.” His first novel Yalnızlık Gittiğin -
J.J. Bola
A Kinshasa born, London raised writer, poet, educator and workshop facilitator. London and UK based, but also international; Paris, Brussels, Boston etc, most recently San Francisco and Oakland, where he won the Oakland Poetry Slam. Performs regularly at shows and festivals such as Tongue Fu, Vocals & Verses, Chill Pill, The Round House, Ventnor Fringe, etc as well as Universities; SOAS, UCL, Oxford, Lincoln, University of Birmingham, Standford University and Merrit College in the Bay and other public institutions. Also includes various Radio and Television appearances.
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JJ Bola has successfully published two books of poetry Elevate and Daughter of the Sun (ebook). His third, and latest, is his most comprehensive poetry collection WORD, which -
Ellen Banda-Aaku
Ellen Banda-Aaku was born in Woking Surrey in 1965. The middle child of three she grew up in Zambia and has lived and worked in Ghana, South Africa, the UK and Zambia.
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In 2004 she won the Macmillan Writers’ Prize for Africa for Wandi’s Little Voice, a book for children. In 2007, her short story, Sozi’s Box, was the overall winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Her novel "Patchwork," published 2011, won the Penguin Prize for African Writing.
She has a BA in Public Administration from the University of Zambia, an MA in Financial Management with Social Policy from Middlesex University and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She’s currently is based in the UK where she lives with her two children Saada -
Iris Mwanza
Iris Mwanza is a Zambian-American author and gender equality advocate. Born and raised in Zambia, early exposure to inequality has been a driving force in her life - from becoming a lawyer, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on women and children’s rights, a career fighting for gender equality, and now a thriller with gender equality as its heart.
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Iris has spent an inordinate amount of time studying and has law degrees from Cornell University and the University of Zambia, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Her day job is Deputy Director of the Women in Leadership team in the Gender Equality Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and her night job is to write. Her -
Ama Asantewa Diaka
Ama Asantewa Diaka is a Ghanaian poet, storyteller, and spoken word artist who performs as Poetra Asantewa. She is the author of the chapbook, You Too Will Know Me, and the debut poetry collection, Woman, Eat Me Whole, and her poems and fiction have appeared in print and online. She recently completed an MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Ghana.
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Shubhangi Swarup
Shubhangi Swarup is a journalist and educationist. She was awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship for Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and has also won awards for gender sensitivity in feature writing. She lives in Mumbai.
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Canisia Lubrin
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her books include the acclaimed and awards-nominated Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst, nominated for ten prizes, finalist for the Trillium and Governor General’s awards for English poetry, and winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Derek Walcott Prize. Lubrin was also awarded the 2021 Joseph Stauffer Prize in literature by the Canada Council for the Arts. Poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart, she is the Creative Writing MFA Coordinator in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. In 2021, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell prize for poetry. Lubrin’s debut work of fiction is Code Noir: Metamorphoses.
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Born in St. -
Amit Majmudar
Amit Majmudar is the author of The Abundance, Partitions, chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best debut novels of 2011 and by Booklist as one of the year’s ten best works of historical fiction. His poetry has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Best American Poetry 2011. A radiologist, he lives in Columbus, Ohio.
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Priscilla Morris
Priscilla Morris is a British author of Cornish-Bosnian parentage, who lives in Monaghan, Ireland. She grew up in London, spending her childhood summers in Sarajevo. Black Butterflies, her debut novel, was inspired by family history and tells one woman's story of disintegration, loss, resilience and hope. When not writing, Priscilla teaches creative writing online and runs writing retreats in Catalonia. Find out more on www.priscillamorris.org
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***
I wrote my debut novel BLACK BUTTERFLIES (2022) to understand the siege that devastated Sarajevo from 1992-1996. It turned many of my maternal relatives, including my grandparents, into refugees. It's inspired by their stories and, in particular, by the extraordinary tale of my great-uncle, the Bosn -
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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Faïza Guène
Faïza Guène is a French writer and director. Born to parents of Algerian origin, she grew up in Pantin, in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris. She attended Collège Jean Jaurès followed by Lycée Marcelin Berthelot in Pantin. She began studies in sociology at Université Paris VIII, in St-Denis, before abandoning them to pursue writing and directing full-time.
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Her first novel, "Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow" was published in 2004 when Guène was nineteen years old. The novel has sold over 200,000 copies and been translated into twenty-two different languages, and paved the way for her following work, "Some Dream for Fools" (2006) and "Les gens du Balto" (2008).
Guène has also written for "Respect" magazine since 2005 and directed several short films, incl -
Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.
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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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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.
LIKE on Facebook: facebook.com/maialnakib
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Hannah Matus
Hannah Matus, Esq. is a licensed attorney in the state of Ohio and a mother of three. Holding an MA degree in English in addition to her J.D., Matus’ most pleasurable hobbies are reading and writing. A Second Look is her debut novel.
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Shugri Said Salh
Shugri Salh is author of the memoir The Last Nomad (Algonquin, 2021) and a supporting actor in the Apple TV+ “Little America” episode set in an immigrant Somali community.
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She was born in the desert of Somalia in 1974 and spent her early years living with her grandmother in the desert as a nomad. In 1992, after the civil war broke out in her home country, she emigrated to North America. She attended nursing school at Pacific Union college and graduated with honors.
Shugri has been storytelling since she could talk. From her grandmother and the nomadic community in which she was raised, she heard stories and learned of their power to entertain, teach, and transform. When she isn’t writing or telling stories, she works as an infusion nurse. Shu -
Tolu Oloruntoba
Tolu Oloruntoba was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and practiced medicine before his current work managing projects for BC health authorities.
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His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, PRISM International, Pleiades, Columbia Journal Online, Obsidian, The Maynard, and the Humber Literary Review, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
His debut chapbook, Manubrium, was published by Anstruther Press, and was shortlisted for the 2020 bpNichol Chapbook Award.
A full-length collection of his poetry, The Junta of Happenstance, is forthcoming from Anstruther Books in Spring 2021.
He lives in Surrey, BC, in the territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, and Kwantlen First Nations. -
Saima Begum
Saima is a British-Bangladeshi writer based in North London. She won the MFest Short Story Competition in 2021.
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Allister Thompson
Allister Thompson is a musician and professional book editor based in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. He has released dozens of albums in the genres of psychedelic rock, progressive rock, folk, and ambient. He has also edited countless novels in all genres in his 20+ years in the publishing industry.
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Outside of literature and music, he really likes trees and rocks, which are abundant where he lives. -
Caitlin Galway
Caitlin Galway is a Canadian novelist and short fiction writer. She has received and been shortlisted for numerous prizes, and her work has appeared in journals and anthologies across North America.
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