2024 Festival Artists
With over a decade-long engagement with Chitral Valley craft communities, his work spans cultural heritage, sustainable design practices, community, and business development. His unique Scottish-Pakistani identity, professional expertise in textile design, and anthropological training allow him to foster cross-cultural dialogues. His passion lies in breaking down cultural barriers and celebrating the common threads connecting traditions.
Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the poetry collection Another Way to Split Water. Her other works include Hinge, Faces that Fled the Wind, and Second Memory, and her nonfiction debut A Beautiful and Vital Place won the Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing and is forthcoming with Canongate. Alycia currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s at the University of Cambridge and she is the recipient of several awards, including a pushcart prize, the CBC Poetry Prize, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.
Amy Acre is a poet and editor, born in London and living in Nottingham. Her debut collection, Mothersong (Bloomsbury, 2023), was named a Poetry Book of the Year in The Telegraph, The Financial Times and California Review of Books, and was a London Review Bookshop Autumn Recommendation. Her work has been selected as a BBC Pick of the Week, and twice as a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She’s written for Radio 4 and featured on The Last Dinosaur’s 2020 track, ‘In The Belly of a Whale’. She runs award-winning indie publisher, Bad Betty Press.
Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts. His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year. In 2020 he published How To Write It with Merky Books; a practical guide fused with tips and memoir looking at the politics of writing as well as the craft of poetry and fiction along with the wider publishing industry. In 2022 he founded Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press. His third poetry collection Heritage Aesthetics published by Granta on 3 November 2022 was a New Statesmen and Financial Times book of the year.
[Biog coming soon]
CANISIA LUBRIN’s books include Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin’s work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize, the Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Stars prize, and others. Lubrin has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, Civitella Ranieri in Italy, Simon Frasier University, Literature Colloquium Berlin, Queen’s University, and Victoria College at University of Toronto. Code Noir: Metamorphoses is her debut fiction. Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin lives in Whitby and is poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart.
Cecelia Graham is a curator based between Belfast, Derry and Mid-Ulster in the north of Ireland. Cecelia explores collective knowledge gathering and non-hierarchical labour practices in order to challenge notions of hyper-productivity, disciplinary borders and power structures often relied on within institutions. Her work considers modes of working that emerge from collaborative and slow methods within ecology, agriculture, craft and messy acts of love and vulnerability. Challenging the language of professionalism, Cecelia seeks alternative modes of advocating for and supporting a community of artists that resist strict, slick outputs.
D. M. Bradford is a poet and translator based in Tio’tia:le (Montreal). They are the author of Dream of No One but Myself (Brick Books, 2021), a Griffin Poetry Prize finalist, and the translator of House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson (Brick Books, 2023), winner of the John Glassco Translation Prize. Bottom Rail on Top (Brick Books, 2023), their second book, is a rolling call and response between antebellum Black history and the present that mediates it.
Elsa Sajjad, a versatile storyteller, is celebrated for her prowess in scriptwriting, slam poetry, and short stories. Armed with a major in Communication and Design and a minor in Comparative Literature, she channels her creative energies to shed light on the unique journey of womanhood in Pakistan. Elsa ardently advocates for amplifying the voices of Pakistani women, recognizing the underrepresentation they face. Through her compelling narratives, she endeavours to foster understanding and inspire others to share their own stories, creating a richer tapestry of experiences.
Fleur Adcock was born in New Zealand in 1934 but has lived in London since 1963. Her books are published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books and in New Zealand by Te Herenga Waka Press. In 2006, she was awarded the Queens’s Gold Medal for Poetry and in 2019 the N Z Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry.
Hannah Lavery is a poet and playwright from Edinburgh, named by Owen Sheers as one of the Ten Writers Asking Questions That Will Shape Our Future. Her debut poetry collection Blood Salt Spring (Polygon) was nominated for a Saltire Prize in 2022, her second collection Unwritten Woman will be published by Polygon in August. Hannah is the current Makar (poet laureate) for the City of Edinburgh, co-host of feminist arts podcast QuineCast and an Associate Artist at National Theatre Scotland (NTS). Her plays for NTS The Drift and Lament for Sheku Bayoh have toured extensively. The Protest, a play for children, will tour the UK this year. She has written for a wide range of theatre companies, broadcasters and publications including BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian. Hannah lives, breathes and dreams on the beaches and cliffs of Scotland’s east coast, with her dreaming often taking her back to the streets and closes of Edinburgh.
Iryna Kupchynska is a Ukrainian poet, essayist, and performer. Since 2017, she has participated in a musical-poetry performance group, Evterpa, that performed at the 35th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster in 2021. In 2022, she was a writer in residence in Herrenhaus Edenkoben, Germany. As a result of the residency, a collection of essays on the secondary experiences of war, Interrogation/Outerrogation, was published in English, with German translation. She holds a master’s in Social Anthropology from SOAS University London, obtained as a Chevening scholar. She currently is a memory work consultant with an international development agency in Ukraine.
Jane McKie’s first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), was awarded the 2008 Sundial/Scottish Arts Council prize for best first book of 2007. Recent collections include Carnation Lily Lily Rose (Blue Diode, 2023), Quiet Woman, Stay (Cinnamon Press, 2020) and Jawbreaker (2021), which won the Wigtown Poetry Festival’s Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize 2021.
Jane is convenor of the Edinburgh-based Shore Poets, facilitating both poetry readings and music, and works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. She is interested in collaboration across forms, writes with 12, a collective of women writers, and with Edinburgh’s genre spoken word group, Writers’ Bloc.
Books by JL Williams include Condition of Fire (Shearsman, 2011), Locust and Marlin (Shearsman, 2014), House of the Tragic Poet (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2016), After Economy (Shearsman, 2017) and Origin (Shearsman, 2022). Published widely in journals, her poetry has been translated into numerous languages. She writes libretti for the The Opera Story and was commissioned to write the 2023 English Touring Opera children’s opera, The Wish Gatherer. Williams is hopeful about the simple and mysterious power of poetry that allows us to know ourselves, each other and the world more deeply.
Kathleen Jamie, poet and essayist, was born in 1962. Her poetry collections include The Overhaul, which won the 2012 Costa Poetry Prize, and The Tree House, which won the Forward prize. Her non-fiction includes the highly regarded Findings trilogy (Findings, Sightlines, and Surfacing), all regarded as important contributions to the ‘new nature writing’. Her most recent poetry collection, The Bonniest Companie appeared in 2015, and won the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. Between 2010 and 2020 she was Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Stirling. Kathleen is presently serving as Scotland’s Makar, or National Poet.
Kevin Mclean is an award-winning spoken word poet, the Creative Director of I Am Loud Productions, and the host of Scotland’s premier Spoken Word night‘Loud Poets’ (2023 Saboteur award for Best regular Spoken Word Night). He has directed, produced, and performed work at the Brighton, Edinburgh, and Prague Fringe festivals, Glastonbury Festival, StAnza Poetry Festival, and Edinburgh International Book Festival. His poetry has been highlighted in media through STV’s The Late Show, and BBC Radio Scotland’s Culture Show, and The Scotsman Sessions.
Linda Besner’s second poetry collection, Feel Happier in Nine Seconds, was a finalist for the A.M. Klein Award. Her first book, The Id Kid, was named as one of the National Post’s Best Poetry Books of the Year. Her poetry has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Review, and her award-winning nonfiction has appeared in The Guardian, the Atlantic, and The Globe & Mail. She has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and was selected as one of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s best emerging artists. Her work has been anthologized in: The Next Wave: 21st Century Canadian Poetry; What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation; and Best Canadian Poetry. You can visit her website here.
[Biog coming soon]
Marjorie Lotfi is a writer, seasoned performer, and the Development Director of Open Book, the charity she co-founded, which runs over 1,000 reading and creative writing groups each year for adults in community settings across Scotland. She is also a 2021 James Berry Prize winner and a Scottish Book Trust Ignite Fellow, as well as being the Deputy Chair of Trustees for StAnza, Scotland’s international Poetry Festival.
Her first collection of poetry Refuge (Tapsalteerie) reflects on her childhood experiences of growing up in revolutionary Iran in the 1970s. Her poems have been included in Best Scottish Poems, won competitions and been performed live across Scotland and on BBC Radio 4/Radio Scotland. They have also been widely published, including in Being Human and journals such as The Rialto, Gutter, Rattle, Ambit and Magma, and have been commissioned for a number of anthologies.
Milla van der Have is a Gemini. She’s has two chapbooks: Ghosts of Old Virginny (2015) and the Spanish-English Avistamiento de ballenas (2021) and one more on the way: Ox and Mandarin | Wayfaring Strangers is due for publication in early 2024, both in an English and a Spanish version. Milla lives in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She is the host of Poetry Lit!
Mouna Ouafik is a Moroccan poet, writer and photographer. She has published three collections of poetry: Brown Vanilla (Dar Azmina, Jordan – the book was banned, the publisher prosecuted and then released); Red Neon (Dar Alnahda, Beirut); Sharp edge of a half-broken plate (Dar Rawafid, Cairo); and two collections of short stories: Mint, wax and death (Dar Sharqiyyat, Cairo); Lo3ab.com (Dar Afaq, Cairo). She is currently completing a vast autobiographical collection entitled From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin; a “different kind of autobiography”. For the Shaeirat Project she created the stand-up performance From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin.
Pádraig Ó Tuama is the host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound and the author of Poetry Unbound; 50 Poems to Open Your Life. He is a poet with interests in language, violence, power and religion. Feed the Beast is his most recent collection with both Kitchen Hymns and Poetry Unbound; 40 Poems on Being with Each Other are forthcoming in October 2024.
Phoebe Wang is a first-generation Chinese-Canadian writer and educator living in Toronto/Tkaronto. Her first collection of poetry, Admission Requirements (McClelland and Stewart, 2017) was nominated for the Trillium Book Award and her second collection, Waking Occupations appeared in 2022. Relative to Wind, a collection of essays on identity and sailing, will be published with Assembly Press in 2024. She works at OCAD University as a Writing and Learning Consultant and is a mentor in the University of Toronto MA in Creative Writing program.
Rachel Rankin is a poet, translator and poetry translation researcher from Coatbridge, currently based in Edinburgh.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Magma, Anthropocene and Words Without Borders, among others. Her work has also been recognised by the Grierson Verse Prize (2023), the Wigtown Poetry Prize (2023), the Manchester Cathedral Poetry Prize (2023), the Stephen Spender Prize (2023) and the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awards (2019). Rachel is currently finalising a practice-based doctoral thesis, in which she explores the feasibility of different poetry translation approaches on two contrasting styles of Norwegian poetry, and she has delivered talks and lectures on poetry translation at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Oslo, the British Centre for Literary Translation and Babeș-Bolyai University. Rachel also works as a Tutor in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
Robbie MacLeòid is a poet, translator, and songwriter, who creates in English and Scottish Gaelic. In 2023, he was awarded the New Writers Award for Poetry (Gaelic) by the Scottish Book Trust. In 2022, the manuscript for his first poetry collection won Best Unpublished Manuscript at the Gaelic Literature Awards, and was Highly commended in the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. You can find his work in Gutter, New Writing Scotland, and STEALL, among other places. In 2021, with the Edwin Morgan Trust, he created a zine in which he translated several Edwin Morgan love poems into Gaelic. In his work he explores queerness, anti-colonialism, feminism, and play.
Rosa Campbell lives in Leith, and is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews. Her poetry has appeared in various places, including Oxford Poetry, fourteen poems, Perverse, Ambit, Gutter and SPAM. Her first book, Pothos, a lyric essay/memoir about grief and houseplants, was published in 2021 by Broken Sleep Books, and she is the editor of The Miraculous Season: The Selected Poems of V.R. ‘Bunny’ Lang, forthcoming with Carcanet in February 2024.
Saskia McCracken is a Glasgow-based writer. Her poetry and fiction publications include Imperative Utopia (-algia press), The King of Birds (Hickathrift Press), Cyanotypes (Dancing Girl Press), and Zero Hours (Broken Sleep Books). Her work appears in publications including Magma, Datableed, and Amberflora, and in anthologies by Dostoyevsky Wannabe and Spam Press. With a background in community heritage, she is also Development Coordinator at Glasgow Zine Library, responsible for securing funding through grants, sponsorship and more.
Soukaina Habiballah is a poet, writer, performer from Casablanca, has a diverse portfolio that includes four poetry collections and a novel, The Barracks (2016), along with a short story collection. Her work has garnered recognition, earning her awards such as the Buland Al-Haidari Prize for Arabic Poetry in 2015, the Floating Voices Poetry Award in Italy, and the Nadine Shams Prize for Arab Screenwriters in 2018 for her short film, Who Left the Door Open?. In 2019, she was the recipient of the Creative and Critical Writing Grant from the Arab Fund of Arts and Culture for her collection, Maybe Tomorrow. Her poetry has been translated into seven languages, including English. Soukaina actively participates in literary festivals, providing readings, panels, and workshops in the USA, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, and Europe. She has also served on the jury panel of several awards, including the National Award of Book in Morocco and the Translation Poetry Award at Smith College. She teaches creative writing both in Morocco and internationally, and was named an Honorary Fellow in Writing by the University of Iowa. In 2019, she joined the International Writing Program, and in 2022, she performed her poetry at the Festival d’Avignon, as well as in Switzerland and Egypt. Soukaina is also a co-director of the Shaeirat collective, focusing on Arabic performance poetry.
Tim Postovit was born in Ukraine, spent his early childhood in Israel and has lived in the Czech Republic since the age of six. He studies Russian philology at Charles University in Prague. In 2019 he published his debut collection of poems, Magistrála (Highway). A poem from this book has been featured in the annual Best Czech Poetry anthology. He also performs slam poetry and holds the 2019 joint title for duo slam poetry. In 2021 he published second collection Motýlí pavilon (The Butterfly Pavilion).
William Letford has three collections of poetry published by Carcanet Press. His work has been adapted into film, projected onto buildings, carved into monuments, adapted for the stage, cast out over the radio, and performed by orchestras. He has helped restore a medieval village in the mountains of Northern Italy, taught English in Japan, and been invited to perform in Iraq, South Korea, Lebanon, Australia, Germany, India, Poland, and many more countries.
[Biog coming soon]
Alice Tarbuck is an award-winning poet, writer and academic. She has taught Creative Writing at the University of Dundee, and the University of York, and is a 2019 Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Awardee for poetry. Her debut non-fiction book A Spell in the Wild: a year (and six centuries) of Magic (Hodder, 2020) was shortlisted for the 2021 ASLE Nature Writing Award. Her poetry has been widely published and she is part of 12, an Edinburgh writing collective.
Alyson’s latest publication is End of the Glacier, a pamphlet of poems that are in conversation with the work of the artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Alyson has published sole and co-authored books of poetry and prose, collaborated with scientists, composers, dancers, visual artists, sculptors and for the past twenty years she has curated the international poetry and public art project, The Migration Habits of Stones. Alyson is a Hawthornden Fellow, has been a Charles Causley poet-in-residence, and she used to be a housekeeper in the Abbey on the Isle of Iona.
Andy Jackson is a poet, creative writing teacher at the University of Melbourne, and a Patron of Writers Victoria. He was the inaugural Writing the Future of Health Fellow, has co-edited disability-themed issues of Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal, and is on the editorial team for disability poetry journal Sunder. Andy’s latest poetry collection is Human Looking, which won the ALS Gold Medal and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry.
Dr Anthony Joseph F.R.S.L. is an award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. His 2022 collection Sonnets for Albert won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2022 and the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Poetry. He is the author of four previous poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Fiction. His most recent fiction publication is the experimental novel The Frequency of Magic. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kings College, London.
Armand Garnet Ruffo is an Anishinaabe writer from Treaty 9 territory in northern Ontario, Canada. A recipient of a Honourary Life Membership Award from The League of Canadian Poets and the Latner Canada Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize, he is recognized as a major contributor to both Indigenous literature and Indigenous literary scholarship in Canada. His publications Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird (creative non-fiction, 2014) and Treaty # (poetry, 2019) were finalists for Governor General Literary Awards. A new book, The Dialogues: the Song of Francis Pegahmagabow will be published in the spring of 2024. He lives in Kingston and teaches at Queen’s University.
Violinist, composer and vocalist Catriona Price is one of the most versatile Scottish musicians on the international stage. Catriona is equally at home in a folk or improvisation session as in classical settings, having spent her childhood in Orkney fiddle groups before training at the Royal Academy of Music. She is passionate about breaking down genre barriers and collaborating across art forms and cultures in all of her work. Catriona’s debut solo album Hert came out in 2023. She is a member of contemporary folk duo Twelfth Day and folk band Fara and Co-Artistic Director of string ensemble Thirteen North. Catriona is Artistic Director of Routes to Roots – an organisation creating intercultural music collaborations to connect communities.
Born in Cameroon, Clementine E Burnley now lives and works between the UK and Germany. She is a part-time, practice-based student at the Research Society for Process Oriented Psychotherapy, with a focus on conflict mediation, and group facilitation. Her poems have appeared in IS&T, Magma, and The Poetry Review. In 2021 Clementine’s poem was selected by Hugh Macmillan as one of the Best Scottish Poems. She was the RSL Sky Award Winner for creative nonfiction in 2021. Her first pamphlet, Radical Pairings, was published by Ignitionpress in 2023. Radical Pairings was shortlisted for the 2023 Michael Marks Pamphlet Award.
Dawn Watson is a poet from Belfast. Her debut collection We Play Here is published by Granta Poetry (2023), and she is the author of The Stack of Owls is Getting Higher (The Emma Press). Dawn completed a PhD in poetry at Queen’s University in 2022. She has written for BBC Radio 4, and her work has appeared in journals such as Granta magazine and The Poetry Review. She is the recipient of an ACES award and a General Arts Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Dawn is a lecturer in creative writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre.
Erin Robinsong is a poet and interdisciplinary artist working with ecological imagination. She is the author of Rag Cosmology (Book*hug, 2017) and Wet Dream (Brick Books, 2022), both winners of the AM Klein Prize for Poetry. Performance works with Andréa de Keijzer and Hanna Sybille Müller include This ritual is not an accident; Facing away from that which is coming and Polymorphic Microbe Bodies. Erin grew up in Coast Salish Territory, on Cortes Island.
Gerda Stevenson is an award-winning writer, actor and director. Her poetry and drama are studied on Glasgow University’s Contemporary Scottish Literature course and her poetry collections include If This Were Real (Smokestack Books) and Quines: Poems in tribute to the women of Scotland (Luath Press).
Henri jules Julien is a director, playwright, producer and translator of Arabic poetry into French. He has lived in North Africa for the past twelve years. He initiated the SHAEIRAT project, an international platform for the creation and dissemination of bilingual performances of Arabic poetry by the poets themselves.
Ivan Hnativ is a poet and translator based in Lviv, Ukraine. He’s been a participant in poetry and literary festivals around Ukraine, namely BookForum and KyivBookFest. His works have appeared in Ukrainian and international online and printed editions. You can find English translations of his poems in SurVision Magazine. He translates contemporary British poetry, such as that of Jemma Borg, Raymond Antrobus, and Tishani Doshi among others. His poems interrogate the passage of time, memory, and observations of the natural world.
Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican writer, poet, and academic who works as an associate professor of Critical Theory and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. He’s the author of two critically acclaimed poetry collections: Thinking with Trees, winner of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for poetry; and Self-Portrait as Othello, a Poetry Book Society Choice and winner of both the Forward Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize. His most recent book is Engagements with Aimé Césaire: Thinking with Spirits, published by Oxford University Press.
Julie Laing is a Glasgow-based writer and artist. She is the winner of the Wigtown Poetry Prize 2022 and was mentored through the St Mungo Mirrorball’s Clydebuilt 13 verse apprenticeship scheme. Her poem, livestream, hope street, was selected as one Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems 2022 and other work has been published in New Writing Scotland, Gutter magazine, The Edwin Morgan Centenary Collection, Studies in Photography and elsewhere. She co-founded off-page, an ongoing series of visual poetry exhibitions, with CD Boyland, and coordinates Round Table, a peer-led criticism group supported by Street Level Photoworks.
Dr. Katie Ailes is a poet, producer, educator, and researcher focusing on performance poetry. Since 2015 Katie has worked with I Am Loud Productions to coordinate hundreds of Loud Poets spoken word events, videos, podcasts, and other projects, and she currently serves as their Education and Access Director. In 2023 she was the Glastonbury Festival Poet in Residence. Katie’s PhD focused on the performance of authenticity in contemporary UK spoken word. Katie is also a classically trained dancer and choreographer interested in the intersection between speech and movement.
Leigh Kotsilidis is a poet and intermedia artist who creates work at the intersection of literary and intermedia arts and science. She has written two books of poetry, Hypotheticals (Coach House Books, 2011) and Some of Us May Live (forthcoming); and has showcased her artwork at the Red Path Museum and Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal, at SummerWorks and Canadian Stage in Toronto, and at HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste) and Wilde Gallery in Basel, Switzerland. She lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal) on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory.
Lisa shares words through solo readings and performance with musicians/ soundmakers. Her poetry collection Faultline was released as a collaborative recording project, and a recent ritual performance Return wove together a long poem for four voices, a string quartet, two pipes and two drums. Lisa is also a bodyworker and activist concerned with dialogue and information exchange about health in the context of social justice and has published related work including the book Warp & Weft: psycho-emotional health, politics and experiences.
Lucille Mona Ling is a poet from Berlin, currently based in Glasgow. She was part of St. Mungo Mirrorball’s Verse Apprenticeship Scheme Clydebuilt 14 (2021-2022), mentored by J.L. Williams. Her poem Historic Recurrence has been included in the Scottish Poetry Library’s Anthology of Best Scottish Poems of 2021. Recent publications include poems in Gutter, Propel Magazine and Horizon Magazine. Since 2023 she is the founder and poetry editor at Contralytic: an interdisciplinary philosophy journal. She has recently read at Glasgow’s CCA, as well as Edinburgh’s Multicultural Festival and The Fruitmarket Gallery.
[Biog coming soon]
Moez Surani’s writing has been published internationally, including in Harper’s Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, and the Globe and Mail. He has been an artist-in-residence in Finland, Italy, Latvia, Myanmar, Switzerland, Taiwan, the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and at MacDowell in the United States. His visual works have been shown at WhiteBox in New York, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Centre. He is the author of four poetry books: Reticent Bodies, Floating Life, Operations, and Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real. His debut novel, The Legend of Baraffo, was published in fall 2023. You can visit his website here.
Niamh Seana Meehan is a visual artist based in Ireland. She works across written matter, visual art, and performance. Spending the last five years cold water swimming, Meehan is currently developing a floating methodology, to explore our relationship with bodies of water and the non-human.
Patrick Friesen, of Victoria, Canada, has published more than a dozen books of poetry, a book of essays, stage and radio plays, videos and several CDs of spoken word/music. He has co-translated, with Per Brask, six books of Danish poetry. His play a short history of crazy bone was awarded Most Outstanding New Work by the Winnipeg Theatre Awards in 2018. Most recently he has released the books Outlasting the Weather: Selected and New Poems, and Reckoning, as well as the albums O’Keeffe Bones (music by Niko Friesen) and Poems: A Selected Reading. His website is: patrickfriesen.com and his works are available for purchase here.
Rachael Allen is the author of Kingdomland and God Complex, both published by Faber. She works as an editor and lecturer in London.
Rebecca Ferrier was the Bridge Award winner for an Emerging Writer in 2020, shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize in 2023 and runner-up for the inaugural Disabled Poets Prize. Her poetry has been published by Poetry Ireland Review, Canthius and Anthropocene, while her prose can be found with Extra Teeth and New Gothic Review. She is a PhD student at Northumbria University and a member of Glasgow University’s RSE-funded Death Writes network. She was a UNESCO City of Literature virtual writer-in-residence at the Melbourne Literary Festival in 2021, hosted by Emerging Writers Festival. Rebecca was also part of the first All Stories development cohort and secured funding from Creative Scotland for her debut novel about sickness, the sea and difficult women. She is represented by Alex Cochran at C&W (part of The Curtis Brown Group).
Robin Harris is a meditation Facilitator for Tergar International, and co-founder of Tergar Edinburgh Meditation Community. He also works for the Tergar International Events Team, coordinating meditation events both online and in-person around the world. Robin spent 4 years as a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and has since trained in secular Mindfulness and teaching meditation to children and young people.
Roshni is a poet from Leeds living in Edinburgh. She is co-winner of the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2022 and a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Awardee 2022. Her debut pamphlet Bird Cherry is published by Verve Poetry Press (Feb 2023). Her work has appeared in a variety of literary publications including Best Scottish Poems, Gutter, New Writing Scotland, Propel, and The Scotsman newspaper. In her work, she explores themes of nature, memory, and quietness.
Sean Wai Keung is a Glasgow-based poet and performance maker whose work often explores concepts of mixed-ness, identity, interactivity and migration. He has worked on outdoor, interactive and food-driven poetic installations with Tramway, Push the Boat Out Festival, Hidden Door and Dandelion Festival, to name a few. For more information, please visit seanwaikeung.carrd.co
[Biog coming soon]
Theresa Muñoz is Director of the Newcastle Poetry Festival and Research Associate in Contemporary Poetry at Newcastle University. She has published one collection, Settle, which shortlisted for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize. In 2018 she received a Muriel Spark Centenary Award and a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. In 2020 she received a Creative Scotland Open Fund Award to write one of the first sequences on inter-racial couples in Scotland. In 2022 she was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Sky Arts Award for her creative non-fiction. She is currently working on her second collection, Archivum, which studies our relationship with materials. Her work has appeared in Poetry Review, Canadian Literature, Arc magazine and Best Scottish Poems.
Yomi Ṣode is an award-winning Nigerian British writer. His debut collection Manorism, published by Penguin in October 2022 alongside a stage adaptation at Southbank Centre, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 and the TS Eliot Prize 2022. He received the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. Yomi‘s one-man show COAT toured nationally to sold-out audiences. In 2020, his libretto Remnants, written in collaboration with composer James B. Wilson and performed with Chineke! Orchestra premiered on BBC Radio 3. In 2021, his play, and breathe… premiered at the Almeida Theatre. Yomi is a Complete Works alumnus and is the founder of BoxedIn, First Five and mentorship programme 12in12.
Alison Cohen lives in Glasgow. She started to write poetry in 2017 as a way of continuing to think about life after retiring from her work as a medical psychotherapist. She was a Clydebuilt 14 Apprentice, working with JL Williams. Her poetry has been published in several magazines and anthologies including Gutter, New Writing Scotland, 14 magazine and Magma. Her poem Job Description is included in the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems 2022 anthology. She won the Hugh Miller Poetry Competition in 2020 and the Federation of Writers in Scotland Autumn Equinox Competition in 2022.
Alyson Kissner is co-winner of the 2022 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and placed second in the 2023 Bridport Poetry Prize. She has also been shortlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’Prize and the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Alyson recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Both her creative and critical practices interrogate themes of identity, language, power and abuse, grief, and the natural world. Her work can be found at alysonkissner.com.
Anne-Laure Coxam is a French-born poet living in Edinburgh. She had work published in various magazines, her pamphlet Toolbox Therapy was published by Sad Press in 2016, her first full collection the male and the female poet go to the surgery in exciting times was published by Blue Diode Press in 2022. Since 2016, she is a member of 12, a collective of women poets. In addition to poetry, she wrote and delivered bilingual performances about relationships, politics, poets and languages.
Anupa Gardner (b. 1980) is an Indian born artist based in Scotland working mainly in the field of printmaking. The tactile nature and physicality of printmaking deepens her sense of identity and belonging. The very act of carving, making one’s mark is grounding.
Anupa has taken on various roles in her career as designer, illustrator, educator, technician and editioner. She now concentrates on her own practice and teaches at Edinburgh College of Art. She also delivers a variety of workshops across Scotland.
Beth Frieden is an American poet who now lives in Glasgow. She writes in Scottish Gaelic and English and her debut bilingual pamphlet Acair san talamh / Anchor in the land was published by Stewed Rhubarb in 2023. She has performed her poetry at the opening ceremony of the World Cycling Championships and at StAnza 2023. Beth was a member of the Genesis Jewish Book Week Emerging Writers Programme in 2023-24.
CD Boyland is a poet, visual poet, and editor who lives in Cumbernauld, near Glasgow. His debut, full-length collection, Mephistopheles was published by Blue Diode Press in 2023. His pamphlets are Ptchdk (2023); Vessel (2022); SMC (also 2022) and User Stories (2020). Other work has been published in magazines and anthologies such as: 3AM Magazine, Beir Bua, Gutter, The Interpreter’s House, The North and New Writing Scotland. He is a Trustee of the Edwin Morgan Trust and also co-edits The Glasgow Review of Books.
Daljit’s latest book is indiom. He’s Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, Advisor Poetry By Heart, and his five poetry books have been published by Faber & Faber. The inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Radio 4 & 4 Extra, he presents the weekly Poetry Extra.
Elodie Laügt teaches and researches twentieth and twenty-first century poetry in French as well as its relations to philosophy and politics at the University of St Andrews. Her pamphlet Waterlines will be published by Matecznik Press in 2024.
Fife Writes aims to provide opportunities for local writers of all kinds and abilities to improve their writing and to perform in front of live audiences if they wish. Our main purpose is to encourage involvement and provide the opportunity to write and perform. We aim to be a peer support group for writers of all genres and to encourage each other to write and share our work. We hold events such as storytelling, short stories, novels, poetry, performance and music across Fife where we invite readers and performers from the very inexperienced to full professionals. We also hold creative writing workshops and other events to support writers across Fife.
Glasgow Zine Library is a community archive and zine library based in Govanhill, Glasgow, established in 2018. We have a growing international collection of around 4000 zines (self-published magazines). GZL also hosts a blended online/offline programme of workshops, professional and artistic development opportunities, community meals, film screenings, discussion groups, reading groups, children’s arts and crafts, social clubs, heritage activities and more. All of our events are either free or pay-what-you-can. We also programme Glasgow Zine Fest, an annual celebration of zine culture, now in its 11th year.
Ilya Rudiyko is a poet, editor and literary critic, and editor-in-chief of Kult Krytyky media. He works mainly with books of modern Ukrainian literature. His selected poetic texts were published on the portal Chytomo (2023), as well as in the anthologies Nizhnyi val (2023) and Words Unite Oceans (2022). He was awarded a distinction in Smoloskyp (2022) and Haivoronnia (2021) poetry competitions, as well as taking second place in the short alternative prose competition Portwine on Route 444. He writes historiosophical poetry about the dense coexistence of past and present in the same space.
Jane Goldman’s debut collection is SEKXPHRASTIKS (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021) — ‘I LOVE THIS BOOK!!! WOW […] IT JUST GOES GOES GOES!!!’ (CAConrad). Her translation of Catullus 64 (Main Point Books, 2023) is ‘a virtuoso display of language which moves from the sublime to the scatological in an instant and is never anything less than gripping’ (Bryn Maur Classical Review). Reader in English Literature at Glasgow University, member of 12, a collective of women poets— see Spaces Open (Main Point Books, 2023) — she’s also a veteran of the Writers’ Shift at the Fruitmarket gallery, Edinburgh— see Writers’ Shift (Fruitmarket, 2022).
[Biog coming soon]
Juana Adcock is a Mexican poet, translator and editor based in Scotland. She is the author of Manca (Tierra Adentro, 2014), Vestigial (Stewed Rhubarb, 2022), and Split (Blue Diode, 2019), which was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was included in the Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019. She is co-editor of the anthology of poetry by Latin American women Temporary Archives (Arc Publications, 2022), and her translation of the Mè’phàà poet Hubert Matiúwàa’s The Dogs Dreamt received a PEN Translates award. She has also translated Laura Wittner’s Translation of the Route (Poetry Translation Centre, forthcoming 2024) and Lola Ancira’s The Sadness of Shadows (MTO Press, forthcoming 2024).
Katie Fowlie is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Fife. She was fortunate to grow up on the outskirts of St Andrews, and developed a deep connection to the Scottish coastal landscape. She is drawn to Fife’s sweeping coastline, its ever-changing terrain and the clues it provides to its Industrial Heritage. Her inspiration comes from the environment around her, and foraging is central to my artistic practice. Being outdoors each day provides the freedom, sensory nourishment and thinking space for Katie to devise creative projects whilst collecting the materials she enjoys working with as an artist.
Leontia Flynn’s has published five collections of poetry with Jonathan Cape and been described as ‘a poet who is not only one of the best writers of her generation but who seems, more and more, to be the voice of that generation’ (John McAuliffe Irish Times). She was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022, and is a professor at Queen’s University. Her most recent book Taking Liberties was published in 2023. She lives in Belfast.
Liz Lochhead was born in Motherwell in 1947. While studying at the Glasgow School of Art she began to write seriously, gradually losing her way with her initial dream of becoming a painter. Her first book of poetry, Memo for Spring, was published in 1972 and sold 5,000 copies. She has since published several plays and poetry collections including most recently Fugitive Colours. Liz Lochhead was Scots Makar from 2011–2016 and was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. She lives in Glasgow.
Maria Sledmere is an artist, critic and writer based in Glasgow. They are lecturer in English & Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde and recently named in the Saltire Society’s 40 under 40 list of ‘outstanding Scottish creatives’. Maria is Managing Editor of SPAM Press and the author of many poetry books including An Aura of Plasma Around the Sun (Hem Press, 2023) and Cinders (KRUPSKAYA Books, 2024).
Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author, and the Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh. His prose debut, Boy Friends, was published by Faber & Faber in 2022—it was rave reviewed and a Sunday Times Critics Choice. His third collection, The Cat Prince & Other Poems, was released in 2023 and won the Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Best Poetry 2023. Pedersen has been shortlisted for the Forward Prizes for Poetry and The Saltire National Book Awards, and won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship.
Monika Szuba is a researcher and translator, associate professor at the Institute of English and American Studies, the University of Gdańsk, and Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. Her research is concerned with modern and contemporary literature informed by environmental humanities, with particular interest in phenomenology. She is the author of two monographs, Contemporary Scottish Poetry and the Natural World: Burnside, Jamie, Robertson and White (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and Landscape Poetics: Scottish Textual Practice, 1928-Present (Edinburgh University Press 2023).
Oli Hazzard is the author of two books of poems, Between Two Windows (Carcanet, 2012) and Blotter (Carcanet, 2018), and a novel, Lorem Ipsum (Prototype, 2021). He teaches at the University of St Andrews and lives in Glasgow. His third poetry collection, Sleepers Awake, is published in February 2024.
Peter Mackay / Pàdraig MacAoidh is a poet, lecturer and broadcaster. He has two collections of poems, Nàdur De (Some Kind of, 2020) and Gu Leòr (Galore, 2015), published by Acair, and a pamphlet, From Another Island, with Clutag Press (2010). He writes in Gàidhlig and English, and his work has been translated into Czech, French, German, Irish, Occitan, Macedonian and Slovakian. His academic work includes This Strange Loneliness: Heaney’s Wordsworth (2021) and Sorley MacLean (2011); he is a Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University of St Andrews.
‘S e bàrd, craoladair agus oraidaiche a th’ann am Pàdraig MacAoidh. Tha dà leabhar bàrdachd aige, Gu Leòr (Acair 2015) agus Nàdur De (Acair 2020), agus pamflaid, From Another Island (Clutag, 2010). Bidh e a’ sgrìobhadh anns a’ Ghàidhlig agus a’ Bheurla, agus chaidh an obair aige eadar-theangachadh gu Beurla, Fraingis, Gaeilge, Gearmalitis, Masadonais, Ogsatainis, Seicis, agus Slòbhacais. Mar oraidiche tha e ag obair aig Oilthigh Chill Ribhinn, agus tha e air sgrìobhadh This Strange Loneliness: Heaney’s Wordsworth (2021) and Sorley MacLean (2011).
Rachel Mann is a priest, writer and broadcaster. She is the author of thirteen books, including her debut poetry collection, A Kingdom of Love (Carcanet, 2019), and the acclaimed non-fiction, Fierce Imaginings: The Great War, Ritual, Memory, and God (DLT, 2017). She is a Visiting Teaching Fellow at The Manchester Writing School, and broadcasts regularly, including as a contributor to Thought For The Day. Her second collection, Eleanor Among the Saints, is published by Carcanet in January 2024.
Rebecca Sharp is a poet, playwright and interdisciplinary artist from Glasgow, based in Fife. Currently the inaugural Artist in Residence with the Centre for Energy Ethics (University of St Andrews). Her recent pamphlet collection Rough Currency (Tapsalteerie 2021) received a Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature, and an Art of Energy Award with the Centre for Energy Ethics. The film of her poem Velella velella (Steve Smart, Alex South) was shortlisted for the Scottish Landscape Awards 2023, exhibited at City Art Centre, Edinburgh. Her forthcoming collection Long Field Loop will be published by Tapsalteerie in May 2024.
Rody Gorman lives in Skye. His most recent publications are Lorg Eile/Final Call (2022) and Sa Chnoc (2024). His version Sweeney: An Intertonguing is published by Francis Boutle in 2024.
Sara M Saleh is a writer, poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants living on Bidjigal land. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published widely and she has run writing workshops in countless classrooms, community spaces, and festivals. She is co-editor of the ground-breaking 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity. Her first novel Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm Press) and her full-length poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat (UQP), were both released in late 2023. Sara is the first and only poet to win both the 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of the inaugural Affirm fellowship for Sweatshop writers, a Neilma Sidney travel grant, Varuna writer’s residency, and Amant writer’s residency in New York, amongst other prizes and honours.
Selina Nwulu is a poet and essayist. Her work has been widely published in a variety of journals, short films and anthologies, including the critically acclaimed New Daughters of Africa. Her first chapbook collection, The Secrets I Let Slip, was published in 2015 by Burning Eye Books and is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. She was Young Poet Laureate for London 2015-6 and shortlisted for the 2019 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. She was also a 2021 Arts Award Finalist for Environmental Writing. Her debut full length collection, A Little Resurrection, also a Poetry Book Society recommendation, was published with Bloomsbury in 2022 and is an Irish Times book of the year. Her work was also Highly Commended for the 2023 Forward Prizes.
Stephanie Green’s third pamphlet, Ortelius’ Sea-Monsters (Wigtown Festival Company, 2023) was winner of the Alastair Reid prize. She was also shortlisted for the 2023 Wigtown single poem prize. She has performed at StAnza before in 2015 to launch her pamphlet Flout (HappenStance) and in 2020, Berlin Umbrella, a poetry/sound walk listened to within umbrellas. Her latest poetry/sound walk is Rewilding: Brodgar, (Orkney Nature Festival, 2023). Co-curator of ‘PoetryLit’ online, she lives in Edinburgh.
[Biog coming soon]
Yuliana Lesniak is a poet, translator, and journalist based in Lviv, Ukraine. Prize-winner of Ukrainian creative writing contests such as Smoloskyp (2023), Malakhitovyi Nosorih (2022), Haivoronnia (2021), Khortytski Dzvony (2018). She has participated in many poetry events and in such literary and art festivals as BookForum (Ukraine), Festival ‘Ї’ (Ukraine), Kala Ghoda Festival (India). In November 2023, her poems became a part of the audio-light performance Spectral Poetry created by Spanish artist Pablo Valbuena. Her poems have been published in Ukrainian literary magazines and anthologies such as Dzvin, Molodi holosy, Poetychne metro, In Principio Erat Verbum, and others. In her poetry she explores themes of individual memory and identity, different kinds of human experience, and war.
