Jackie Kay Presents

Exceptional times call for exceptional writers. Scottish Makar, poet, and novelist Jackie Kay introduces her selection of ten of the most exciting BAME writers working in the UK today. Experience incredible writing and find out why Jackie feels these are the writers who are influencing and shaping the UK’s poetry and literature scenes. Jackie will be joined in conversation with three of her chosen writers (Imtiaz Dharker, Diana Evans and Nadine Aisha Jassat) as she explores what makes their work so vital.

Imtiaz Dharker is a poet and artist, awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2014. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she has been Poet in Residence at Cambridge University Library and worked on several projects across art forms in Leeds, Newcastle and Hull, as well as the Archives of St Paul’s Cathedral. Her six collections include Over the Moon and the latest, Luck is the Hook, and her poems have been broadcast widely on BBC Radio 3 and 4 as well as the BBC World Service. She also scripts and directs video films, and has had eleven solo exhibitions of drawings.

Diana Evans is the award-winning author of Ordinary People, The Wonder and 26a. Her prize nominations include the Guardian and Commonwealth Best First Book awards, and she was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers. A book of the year in the New Yorker, Ordinary People received the South Bank Sky Arts Award, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Nadine Aisha Jassat is a poet, writer, and creative practitioner, whose work explores storytelling and social justice. She has been published widely online and in print, including in Picador’s essay anthology It’s Not About the Burqa, and 404 Ink’s Nasty Women. Her work has drawn significant acclaim: in 2018, she received a Scottish Book Trust New Writers’ Award, won The British Council’s Discover Project UK Open Call, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Her debut poetry collection, Let Me Tell You This, was released to great praise in March 2019 with award-winning publisher 404 Ink.

Presented by the National Centre for Writing and British Council as part of the International Literature Showcase, a nationwide project to showcase the diversity of writers working in the UK today.

Doors open 6.30pm

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