Malika Booker is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, and co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (a writer’s collective). Her pamphlet Breadfruit, (flipped eye, 2007) received a Poetry Society recommendation and her poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection. She is published with the poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). Booker currently hosts and curates Peepal Tree Press’s Literary podcast, New Caribbean Voices. A Cave Canem Fellow, and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, Malika was awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry, and her poem ‘The Little Miracles’, commissioned by and published in Magma 75 (Autumn 2019) won The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (2020).

Vicky Foster is an award-winning writer, performer and poet who has broadcast extensively across the BBC. She has published two collections of writing and is currently working on her first novel whilst studying for a PhD in English and Creative Writing. She won The Society of Authors’ Imison Award at the 2020 BBC Audio Drama Awards for her Radio 4 play Bathwater, and her Radio 4 documentary, ‘Can I Talk About Heroes?’ was reviewed in the national media. She has written poetry for radio, podcast and TV, delivered writing projects and creative writing workshops for a wide range of organisations, and performed at festivals and events across the North. She is a writer-in-residence for First Story, working with schools to help young people write their own stories.

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. She is the author of – among other books – The Adoption Papers, which won the Forward Prize, Red Dust Road, winner of the Scottish Book of the Year Award, Trumpet, and the Costa-shortlisted Fiere. She is a former Chancellor of the University of Salford and Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

Photo credit: Mary McCartney

Zaffar Kunial was born in Birmingham and lives in Hebden Bridge. He is a recipient of Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize and his first poetry collection, Us, published by Faber & Faber in 2018 appeared on a number of shortlists including the Costa Poetry Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He has a recent pamphlet of cricket poems called Six and a new poetry book also published by Faber called England’s Green

Sinéad Morrissey is the author of six poetry collections. Her awards include first prize in the UK National Poetry Competition, a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Both Through the Square Window and Parallax received the Irish Times Poetry Prize. She was the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2013 and of the Forward Prize in 2017. In 2020 she was awarded the European Poet of Freedom Award for her collection, On Balance, translated into Polish by Magdalena Heydel. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

Jacob Polley was born and grew up in Cumbria. He has published four books of poems with Picador, winning the 2016 T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry for his fourth, Jackself. His fifth book of poems, Material Properties, is due out in 2023. His 2009 novel, Talk of the Town, set in and around Carlisle, won the Somerset Maugham Award. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and lives with his family on the North East coast.

Shane Rhodes spent his formative years on Hessle Road and Orchard Park in Hull. He is the founder and editor of Wrecking Ball Press which has been publishing contemporary literature in Hull since 1997. He is also a published poet and was appointed Curator of Words for the public realm project of Hull 2017. Shane is passionate about making literature accessible and relevant to more people.

Photo credit: Steve Dearden

Louise Wallwein is a poet, playwright and educator. Her work has been performed on shorelines, the sea, the streets, in theatres across the UK and the world, on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and BBC One. Her book Glue is published by SmithDoorstop.

Photo credit: Sheralee Lockheart