As part of Black History Month, Rise Up and Leicester Centre for Creative Writing's Anthony Joseph will be joined by authors Courttia Newland and Irenosen Okojie to discuss their writing life and the challenges of navigating the book industry as a writer of colour. This event will feature readings alongside a panel discussion. Chaired by publisher Farhana Shaikh.
Speaker bios:
Anthony Joseph is an award winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. He is the author of four 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 long listed for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. His most recent publication is the experimental novel The Frequency of Magic. As a musician, he has released seven critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamblyn Foundation Composers Award. He lectures in Creative Writing at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British writer. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask award and was shortlisted for an Edinburgh International First Book Award. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Observer,The Guardian, the BBC and the Huffington Post amongst other publications. Her short stories have been published internationally including Salt's Best British Short Stories 2017 and 2020, Kwani? and The Year's Best Weird Fiction. She was presented at the London Short Story Festival by Booker Prize winning author Ben Okri as a dynamic talent and featured in the Evening Standard Magazine as one of London’s exciting new authors. Her short story collection Speak Gigantular , published by Jacaranda Books was shortlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her new collection of stories, Nudibranch published by Little Brown's Dialogue Books was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. She is the winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize For Fiction for her story, Grace Jones.
www.irenosenokojie.com
Twitter: @IrenosenOkojie
Courttia Newland is the author of seven books including his much lauded debut, The Scholar. His latest novel, The Gospel According to Cane, was published in 2013. His short stories have appeared in many anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. In 2016 he was awarded the Tayner Barbers Award for science fiction writing and the Roland Rees Busary for playwriting. As a screenwriter, he has written two episodes of the Steve McQueen BBC series Small Axe.
Farhana Shaikh is a writer and publisher born in Leicester. She is the founding editor of The Asian Writer. She established Dahlia Publishing to publish regional and diverse writing. In 2017 she won the Penguin/Travelex Next Great Travel Writer competition. More recently she has been longlisted for the Thresholds International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition and the Spread the Word Life Writing Prize. Farhana lives in Leicester but can be found on Twitter talking about books and publishing @farhanashaikh.