Former African slave and explorer, who became an abolitionist leader. Famous for his autobiographical work, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789). 

Buchi Emecheta

Novelist, born in Nigerian. Author of children’s books, an autobiography, Head Above Water (1986), and a television play, ‘A Kind Of Marriage’ (BBC, 1976), she has published over 10 novels, including The Bride Price (1976) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979).

Ben Okri

Born in Nigeria. Booker Prize winner in 1991 for his novel, The Famished Road, He has published poetry, essays and other fiction, including his latest novel, Starbook (2007). Also won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region), the Premio Palmi (Italy) and the Paris Review/Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. Awarded an OBE in 2001.  

Benjamin Zephaniah

Poet. Author of Rasta Time in Palestine (1990), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black, Too Strong (2001). Other poetry and prose-fiction works include books for teens and children – Talking Turkeys (1994), Funky Chickens (1996), Face (1999), Refugee Boy (2001) and Teacher’s Dead (2007). He has written some media commissioned and award-winning plays, including ‘Hurricane Dub’ (1998), ‘Listen to Your Parents’ (radio, 2000) and ‘Dread Poets Society’ (television, 1991). He has recorded spoken word and music and has been awarded or appointed to many honorary doctorates, residences and culture development positions, including, at different times, being shortlisted for the Chairs of Poetry, Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Was Writer in Residence at the Africa Arts Collective, Liverpool.

Jack Mapanje

Poet from Malawi. Beasts of Nalunga (2007), The Last of the Sweet Bananas: New and Selected Poems (2004), Skipping Without Ropes (1998), The Chattering wagtails of Mikuyu Prison 1993) and Of Chameleons and Gods (1981) are his five collections of published poetry. He edited Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (2002) and The African Writers Handbook (1999, with James Gibbs). Won the African Literature Association Folon-Nichols Award (USA, 2002) among others.

Mpalive Msiska

Malawian poet and scholar based at Birkbeck College, University of London. Has published Wole Soyinka (1998), Writing and Africa (1997) and The Quiet Chameleon: A Study of Poetry from Central Africa: A Study of Poetry from Central Africa (1992). He has been a Judge of the Caine Prize for African Writing, and is a member of the Editorial Boards for The Journal of African Cultural Studies and The Journal of Southern African Studies.  

Lemn Sissay

Public and performance poet, playwright and literary activist. Noted spoken word performer, working with children and in broadcast media. Edited an anthology of mostly Black British poets, The Fire People (1988).  Performance productions include ‘Storm’ (2002) and ‘Rebel Without Applause’ (2000).

Kadija George Sesay

Writer, publisher and cultural activist of Sierra Leonian origin. Much experience and leading engagement with literary development among UK blacks. Editor of several anthologies, including Six Plays by Black and Asian African Women Writers (1993) and Write Black, Write British (2005). Publisher of SABLE Litmag and General Secretary of the African Writers Abroad (PEN Centre). Has won several awards recognising her many influential initiatives as a cultural activist.

James Currey

Chairman of James Currey Publishers. Has been Vice President of the Royal African Society. In 1988 and 2000, awarded honours by the Canadian Association of African Studies and the African Studies Association of the United States, respectively, for outstanding contributions in African cultural studies. While with Heinemann, worked with others to put modern African literature in print with the African Writers Series, the first such international and all-Africa imprint.

John La Rose

Died 2006. Publisher, poet, essayist, publisher, filmmaker, cultural and political activist, he was born in Arima, Trinidad. Published two volumes of poetry, Foundations (1966) and Eyelids of Truth Within Me, but best known for establishing New Beacon Books, the first African-Caribbean publishing house in Britain, 1966, also working with Bogle L’Ouverture and other publishing interests on the strategic initiative that was the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books (1982-95).    

William Boyd

Novelist. Born in Accra, Ghana. A Good Man in Africa (1981), his first novel won the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. Other award winning novels include An Ice Cream War (1982), Brazzaville Beach (1990) and The Blue Afternoon (1993). His latest book, Restless (2006) won the Costa Novel Award. William Boyd has played supportive promotional roles for the awareness and development of writing from Africa in Britain. 

Roi Kwabena

Poet, publisher and Pan Africanist. Voted one of ‘The World’s Black Achievers: Past and Present’ by the Liverpool International Slavery Museum. Founding Editor of dialogue cultural magazine. Was Birmingham Poet Laureate, 2001–2002. Poetry works include Lament of the Soul (1974), In the Moment (2006) and Y42K (Spoken Word CD.

Jackie Kay

Scottish poet of part Nigerian origin. The Adoption Papers (1991), her book of autobiographical poetry won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Two’s Company (1992) won a Signal Poetry Award and the Somerset Maugham Award was given to Other Lovers (1993). Trumpet (1998), her first novel won several awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize. Short stories, children’s writings, plays and a Spoken word cassette, Hearsay (1994) are part of her varied literary output.   

Yvonne Brewster

Born in Jamaica, she is the Editor of the important Black Plays series, three books featuring the theatre work of notable Black British playwrights. Respected theatre director and founder of the theatre companies, Talawa (UK, 1985) and The Barn (Jamaica). An OBE in 1993 is the British national recognition for her central roles in theatre development.

Caryl Phillips

Novelist, playwright. Born in St Kitts. Plays include Where there is Darkness (1982) and Strange Fruit (1980). The Wasted Years(1984) won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the Year. Novels include The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), and A Distant Shore (2003). Non-fiction includes The European Tribe (1987) and The Atlantic Sound (2000). Has been awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Martin Luther King Memorial Prize and several fellowships.

Valerie Bloom

Poet. Born in Jamaica, but settled in England in 1979. She has also written for children and has much experience with poetry in schools projects. Books include Touch mi! Tell mi! (1983), Duppy Jamboree and Other Jamaican Poems (1991), Fruits (1997), Let me Touch the Sky: Selected Poems for Children (2000), The World is Sweet (2000), Hot Like Fire (2002), Whoop an’ Shout! (2003), A Twist in the Tale (2005) and On Good Form: Poetry made Simple (2006). Honours include Americas honor Award (1997), Nestle Smarties Book Prize (Bronze award, 0-5 Years Category, 1997) and CLP Award shortlists in 2003 and 2004. She has also edited several anthologies.

Courttia Newland

British-born novelist and playwright. Author of The Scholar (1998), Society Within (1999), Snakeskin (20002) and Co-Editor with Kadija Sesay of IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (2000). Plays include ‘The Far Side’ and ‘Mother’s Day.’

Ekow Eshun

Born in Britain, of Ghanaian parents. Appointed Director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, usually a refuge for the innovative and avant-garde in western culture. But Eshun was already a known television critic on culture and the arts. Most recent book is Black Gold of the Sun (2006), autobiographical work on the African identity in diaspora.

Linton Kwesi Johnson

Highly regarded Dub Poet from Jamaica, Pan-Africanist and a pioneering activist in the development of Black British Literature. Honours include the Cecil Day Lewis Fellowship (1977) and the Institute of Jamaica Musgrave Medal (2005). Audio-visual involvements  include Dread Beat an’ Blood (1974) and the poetry books Inglan Is A Bitch (1980), Voices of the Living and Death (1974) and Dread Beat an’ Blood (1975). Established the LKJ record label in 1981 to produce his dub poetry and music performances and work by others.

Martin Banham

Professor Emeritus and Workshop Theatre Director at Leeds. He helped to establish the Theatre Studies at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he taught from 1956 until 1966 when he settled at Leeds. Publications include African Theatre Today (1976), The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre (editor, 1988, 1990, awarded the Barnard Hewitt Award of the American Society for Theatre Research), The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre (Errol Hill and George Woodyard, eds, 1994, 2004) and A History of Theatre in Africa (editor, 2005). He is also Series Editor with James Gibbs and Femi Osofisan of the annual book-journal African Theatre (since 1999), and has researched, lectured on, workshopped and directed theatre in many countries within Africa and elsewhere, working from his Leeds base.

John Agard

Poet. Born in Guyana. Published poetry includes Man to Pan (1982), which won the Casa de las Americas Prize. Collaborated with his partner, the poet Grace Nichols, on the anthology, From Mouth to Mouth (2004). He has also written for children. Recent work: We Brits (2006). One of the few Black British poets in the national schools’ curriculum.

Delia Jarrett-Macauley

British born Sierra Leone  novelist. Moses and Me, on the Sierra Leonian crisis won the 2005 Orwell Prize for Political Writing. Also author of The Life of Una Marson 1905-1965, and Reconstructing Feminism, Reconstructing Womanhood: Writings on Black Women, 1996. Has held senior lecturing, media and arts development positions in Britain.

Jean Binta Breeze

Born in Jamaica. The Fifth Figure (2006), her most recent book, is a work of prose and poetry. Poetry collections include Ryddim Ravings (1988), The Arrival of Brighteye and Other Poems (2000). A co-editor of Critical Quarterly in London, her dub poetry has also been recorded.

Kwame Kwei-Armah

Playwright and actor. Former TV police drama star, his play, ‘Elmina’s Kitchen,’ on gun crime in Black Britain, won him a Most Promising Playwright Award. He also wrote ‘The Big Life,’ a ska-calypso-soul show, the first black musical at London’s West End.  

Hans Zell

Consultant on African publishing. Founder of Hans Zell (Publishers) Ltd and Editor of The African Book Publishing Record, 1975-2002. Editor, producer or author of many other reference resources on African publishing and book development, including The African Studies Companion: A Guide to Information Sources.  

Malorie Blackman

One of Britain’s most successful children’s author from the black community. Not So Stupid (1990), a novel for teenagers, is the first of over fifty books including the acclaimed trilogy, Noughts and Crosses, Knife Edge and Checkmate. She is much honoured for her work, which has also included screenplays for the BBC and theatre scripts.

Dzifa Benson

Performance poet, originally from Ghana. Has also written prose fiction and radio plays. Her spoken word (poetry and storytelling) performances have been commissioned for audiences at the Tate Britain Gallery, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and Speakeasy in Manchester. One of the featured writers in the Tell Tales Volume One short story anthology and national tour, 2004. 

Fred D’Aguiar

Poet, novelist and playwright. Author of Mama Dot (poetry 1985) and Airy Hall (1989), both of which won the Guyana Poetry Prize. Mama Dot also won the Malcolm X Prize (Poetry) in 1985. Other works include British Subjects (poetry, 1993), The Longest Memory (novel, 1994), winner of the David Higham Prize for Fiction and Whitbread First Novel Award. Also won a CRE Race in the Media Award for his BBC film poetry, ‘Sweet Thames’ (1992). Plays include ‘High Life’ and ‘A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death.’ In 2002, his poems were included in the distinguished list of recordings at the UK Poetry Archive.

Zoe Wicomb

Scholar and novelist, born in South Africa  but based in Scotland. Has published many academic papers.  She is, however, best known for her short stories and novels, including You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), David’s Story (2000) and Living in the Light

Andrea Levy

Novelist. Won the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction and also the Whitbread Book of the Year Award with her novel, Small Island.  That book won a string of other honours including the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2005. Awarded the Arts Council Writers’ Award for Fruit of the Lemon, 1994. Other novels include Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994) and Never Far from Nowhere (1996).

James Berry

Poet. Pioneering influence in the development of Black British poetry. His edited an early anthology, Bluefoot Traveller:Poetry by Westindians in Britain (editor, 1976).   Awarded an OBE for services to poetry in 1990. He won the Grand Prix Winner of the Smarties Prize in 1987 with A Thief in the Village (short stories), and also the National Poetry Prize in 1981 for a poem, ‘Fantasy of an African Boy’. There were also Signal Poetry Award (1989) and Cholmondeley Award (1991) wins. A recording of his poems was added to The Poetry Archive in 2005. He has published over 12 books for children, among which are, Only One of Me (2004), Playing a Dazzler (1996), The Future-Telling Lady (1991) and Anancy Spiderman (1988). Among his poetry collections and other works are Fractured Circles (1979), News for Babylon: The Chatto Westindian- British Poetry (1984) and Rough Sketch Beginning (1996).       

Amryl Johnson

Novelist. Died, aged 56, in 2001. Born in Trinidad but settled in Britain at 11 years old. Several collections of poetry would follow Shackles, her first book in which her activism for minority issues was fully evident. Some of these other poetry books would reflect the increasing complexity in her experience of history. They include Long Road to Nowhere (1985), Sequins for a Ragged Hem (1988), Gorgons (1992) and Calling 2000), in which she gives further voice to her concern for the female voice in poetry.

Brendon Nicholls

Lecturer in African and Postcolonial Studies, Leeds. On the Editorial Boards of several Africa-interested publications, including The Journal of Commonwealth Literatures and the International Journal of African and African-American Studies. Research and conference presentations on Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Dambudzo Marechera and apartheid Cinema.

Alex Wheatle

British-born, of Jamaican origin. Noted chronicler of the Black urban experience, his novels include Brixton Rock (1999), East of Acre Lane (2001), The Seven Sisters (2002), Island Songs (2005) and The Dirty South (2007).

Susheila Nesta

Born in Britain. Professor, Modern Literature, with research and teaching interests in the postcolonial literatures of Black Britain, Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia. Founding Editor of Wasafiri, a quarterly journal of Black British and post-colonial writings and culture. Author of Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain (2002), some books on the work of Sam Selvon, and the acclaimed  Motherlands: Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, shortlisted for the Fawcett Prize in 1991.

Bernadine Evaristo

Novelist of part Nigerian origin. Also a poet.  Her verse novels are Lara (1997), honoured with an EMMA for Best Book/Novel and The Emperor’s Babe (2001). Her novel-with-verse, Soul Tourists, was published in 2005. She has also written for the theatre and contributed reviews and other creative work for anthologies and the cultural press. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Literature.

Robert Fraser

Open University Senior Research Fellow. He has also taught in West Africa among other places. Supportive critic of Black and African writings, who has also published widely on the literatures and discourses of post-imperial Europe, he is involved as, co-editor, with the publication series forming part of a major Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, The Colonial and Postcolonial History of the Book, intended for a 2008 release. Author of the biographical commentaries, Ben Okri: Towards the Invisible City (2002) and The Chameleon Poet (on British poet George Barker, 2002), Fraser has also published work on Marcel Proust and Ayi Kwei Armah. His 1986 historical book on West African Poetry was a much subscribed. In Lifting the Sentence: A Poetics of Postcolonial Fiction (2000), he offered his thoughts on methodology in narrative fiction. He has written bio-drama scripts and a translation for theatre.   

Charlotte Williams

Scholar and writer of Welsh/Guyanese origin, she has lived between Africa, Wales and the Caribbean, and has been concerned with research and community development projects on matters of race, identity, postcolonial relations and nation. Williams is the author of the memoir, Sugar and Slate.  

John Haynes

After a Royal Airforce (RAF) career and then university research studies, he settled in Nigeria, and taught from 1970 to 1988 at the Ahmadu Bello University, establishing a literary journal, Saiwa. His long narrative poem, Letter to Patience (2007), based on his Nigerian experience is the current winner of the Costa Poetry Prize (formerly the Whitbread). He has since returned to Britain and has other volumes of verse and contributions to newspapers and specialist journals, also academic contributions on linguistics, stylistics and language theory. He has maintained his African links with published work on African poetry and stories for African children. His poetry has also been honoured in the Avron and National Poetry competitions.

Joseph Anthony

Poet, novelist and literary workshop facilitator from Trinidad, his two collections of poetry are Desafinado (1994) and Terragaton (1998). He lectures on Creative Writing and Science Fiction.

Ahdaf Soueif

Egyptian novelist. She has studied, publishes and sometimes lives in Britain. She also writes and publishes in Arabic. The Map of Love (1999) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In the Eye of the Sun (1992) was her first novel. Short story collections include Aisha (1983 and 2000), shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, Sandpiper (1996), winner of the Cairo International Book Fair Best Collection of Short Stories Award and the Arabic language work, Zinat al-Hayh wa Qisas Ukhra (1996). Soueif’s cultural and political commentaries are included in Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (2004). Her reviews, creative work and essays are also widely published in Arab and British media, including some work in radio and television, and she has translated a memoir, I Saw Ramallah (Mourid al-Barghouti, 2005) and a play ‘In Deepest Night’ (al-Warsha Theatre Group, 1998).  

Jean Buffong

Novelist, storyteller and Black culture development activist, she was born in Grenada but settled in England in 1962. Her novels include Jump-up Me, Snowflakes in the Sun and Under the Silk Cotton Tree, and she was a founding member of the Anansi Society, which seeks to develop a British audience for the African and Caribbean folktale tradition.

Lynn Innes

Born in Australia, her Comparative Literature doctoral research was on Irish, African and Caribbean Literatures. She was Associate Editor of Okike: A Journal of African Creative Writing founded and edited by Chinua Achebe. She is on the editorial board of Wasafiri and Interventions. Her publications include two anthologies of African short stories edited with Achebe, critical work on Chinua Achebe (1990), The Devil’s Own Mirror: the Irish and the African in Modern Literature (1990), Woman and Nation in Irish Literature and Society, 1880-1935 (1993) and A History of Black and South Asian Writing in Britain, 1700-2000.

Jane Plastow

Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds. Eucational development and community or development theatre roles in Sudan, Kenya, Eritrea, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia. Has produced plays and performance sketches by Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the ANC of South Africa. Publications include Theatre and Empowerment (editor, with Richard Boon, 2004), Three Eritrean Plays (editor, 2004) and African Theatre: Women (editor, 2002).

Karin Barber

Professor in African Studies, University of Birmingham. Her publications include the Royal Anthropological Institute-Amaury Talbot Prize winner, I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town (1991) and The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theatre (2000), which won the Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association (USA). Other publications include Readings in African Popular Culture (editor, 1997), and Yoruba Popular Theatre: Three Plays by the Oyin Adejobi Company (editor, 1994), The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics: Oral and Written Culture in Africa and Beyond (2007) and Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self (editor, 2006). She was joint editor, with Graham Furniss, of the Research in African Literatures Vol. 37, No 3 special edition on “Writing in African Languages”. Karin Barber, earlier in her career, lectured at the University of Ife, Nigeria, touring with the Oyin Adejobi Theatre. She is a traditional chief of the Yoruba.

Elleke Boehmer

From South Africa, a Professor of Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. Involved with development projects for UK-based writing and writers from Africa. Academic works include Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation (2005), Empire, the National and the Postcolonial, 1890-1920 (2002) and Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (1995). She is also the author of the novels, Bloodlines (2000), An Immaculate Figure (1993) and Screens Against he Sky (1990, shortlisted for the David Higham Prize).

Margaret Busby

Born in Ghana. Britain’s youngest and first black woman book publisher as co-founder of Allison & Busby Ltd, pioneering publisher of many leading African and diasporic African authors. In the 1980s, through the Greater Access to Publishing (GAP) organisation, she engaged in campaigns for increased Black representation in British publishing, serving as a judge for literary competitions, and in advisory positions for organisations such as The Africa Centre, London, English PEN and Wasafiri. Editor of the pioneering work, Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent, she also contributed to other books, specialist journals and the general press. She adapted plays for BBC Radio and was honoured with publishing awards in 1970 and 1993, accepting a Ghanaian traditional ruling chieftaincy in 1999. 

E. A. Markham

Poet and novelist, born in Montserrat, but has lived in Britain for most years  since 1956. Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing, Sheffield Hallam University. His poetry collections include Human Rites: Selected Poems 1970-1982 (1984), Misapprehensions (1995), Living in Disguise (1986) and A Rough Climate (2002), shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. He has published  memoirs, A Papua New Guinea Sojourn: More Pleasures of Exile (1998) and Against the Grain: A 1950s Memoir (2007), and edited anthologies of poetry (Hinterland, 1989) and short stories (The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories, 1996). His short story collections include Something Unusual (1986), Ten stories (1984) and At Home with Miss Vanesa (2006). Markham received a Certificate of Honour from the Montserrat in 1997 and recently moved to France.  

Maya Jaggi

Award-winning journalist. Informed media commentator on the writings and writers of African, Black British and other postcolonial origins. She works with The Guardian newspapers and is a contributing editor for Wasafiri.  She also has chapters, reviews, profiles and other essays in media publications and literary anthologies, like Black British Culture and Society (2000) and The Bloomsbury Guide to Women’s Literature (1992). She has interviewed many leading Black and developing world writers and cultural figures, and served as a judge or moderator in many British literary competitions, conferences and other cultural events, especially those involving Black and African participants or subjects. Was a Chair at the 2002 Guildford Book Festival centre of ‘Africa Visions’.  

Abdulrazak Gurnah

Novelist and Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kent, he has also lectured in Nigeria. Born in Tanzania (Zanzibar), he is a widely published critic of postcolonial literatures, the Editor of Essays in African Writing (1993) and its 1995 second volume, Essays in African Writing 2. His fiction works include Desertion (2005), Memory of Departure (1987), Pilgrim’s Way (1988), Dottie (1990) and Paradise (1994), shortlisted for both the Booker and Whitbread literary Prizes. By the Sea (2001) won the Radio France International ‘Temoin du Monde’ Prize.

Doris Lessing

Born in Iran (Persia), and with a Zimbabwean (Southern Rhodesian) upbringing. She has just won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. Some of her best known work reflect the cultural, political and natural landscapes of her African experience. These include The Grass Is Singing (1950), for some years one of the key texts in some African Literature programmes within the continent, the Children of Violence series (1952-69) and her epic novel Mara and Dunn (1999 and 2005). Other notable Lessing novels include The Golden Notebook (1962), The Summer before the Dark (1973) and The Good Terrorist (1985).   

David Dabydeen

Poet, novelist, playwright and scholar of Guyanese-Indian ancestry but also one of such several non-African major immigrant Caribbean or British-born writers with a sustained creative and participatory interest in the African diasporic and postcolonial experience. He won the Commonwealth Literature Prize in 1984 for his evocation of the Afro-Caribbean condition in Slave Song.    

Yasmin Alibhai Brown

Journalist and writer, arrived the UK in 1972 from an earlier life in Uganda. Has written columns and cultural reviews for the British and American press, and is the author of the autobiographical, No Place Like Home and other works on diasporic and postcolonial Britain, such as Who Do We Think We Are? (2000), After Multiculturalism (2000), Mixed Feelings (2001) and Some of My Best Friends Are… (2004). A noted media voice on the Black and African experience in Britain and the world, she has also been Vice President of the UN Asssociation, UK, President of the Institute of Family Therapy and Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre, UK.  

Angus Calder

Poet, critic, editor, historian and journalist, he is retired from the Open University, but also taught in Africa among other places, contributing critical studies and reviews on African literature in the general press and specialist publications. He was co-edited the Journal of Commonwealth Literatures (1981-1987), and was also co-editor of The Raucie Tongue: Selected Essays, Journalism and Interviews by Hugh MacDiarmid. Other non-fictions include Wars (editor, 1999) and Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West 1939-1945 (co-editor Paul Addison, 1987). His poetry includes Walking in Waikato (1995) and Horace in Tollcross (2000).

George Alagiah

Born in Sri Lanka but had a Ghanaian childhood before settling in Britain. Media specialist on Africa and the developing world, he was between 1994 and 1998 based in Johannesburg as the BBC’s Africa Correspondent, reporting on some historic African moments and events in South Africa, Liberia, Zaire, Mozambique, Liberia, Sierra Leone and other places. Was a Chair of ‘Africa Visions’ at the 2002 Cheltenham Festival of Literature, one of the focus or envisioning events/centres for the programme. Aspects of his thoughts and professional experiences inform the book, A Passage to Africa (2001).

Valerie Bloom

Noted performer of her patois and English poems, written for different reading ages. Poetry in education and community development workshop facilitator. 

Zadie Smith

British-born, of part Jamaican origin. Reputation quickly established with first novel, White Teeth (2000), which won her much critical acclaim and a clutch of literary prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best First Book, 2001), Whitbread First Novel Award (2001), WH Smith Award (Best New Talent, 2001), Guardian First Book Award (2000), James Tait Black Memorial Prize (2000) and two EMMAs (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Awards) for Best Book and Best Female Media Newcomer (2000). The Autograph Man (2002), her second novel, won the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for other major awards, including the Booker and Orange Prizes. Her third novel, On Beauty (2005), influenced in parts by E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End, was also well received, winning the Orange Prize for Fiction (2006) and Somerset Maugham Award (2006), also shortlisted for several other awards, including the British Book Awards Decibel Writer of the Year and the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Zadie Smith has also published a work of criticism, Fail Better: The Morality of the Novel (2006) and edited short fiction books, Piece of Flesh (2001) and The May Anthologies (2001)

Malika Booker

Writer, playwright and spoken word artist. Has also been involved with education and collaborative writing and performance touring projects, some resulting in work anthologised in Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women’s Poetry (1998), IC3: The Penguin Anthology of New Black Writing and KIN: Commemorative Tour Anthology (2004). Jointly runs the writer’s collective, ‘Malika’s Kitchen’.

Femi Oyebode

Nigerian Consultant Psychiatrist based in Birmingham. He has published 7 books of poetry and contributed over a hundred scientific papers and book chapters. His poetry books include Naked to Your Softness and Other Poems (1989), Wednesday is a Colour (1990), Forest of Transformations (1991), Master of the Leopard Hunt (1995) and Indigo, Camwood and Mahogany Red (1998).  He has contributed critical essays to the Oxford Companion to 20^th Century Poietry (I. Hamilton, Editor).

Patience Agbabi

Performance poet and workshop facilitator of Nigerian origin, chosen in 2004 as one of the Poetry Book Society’s twenty ‘Next Generation Poets.’ Her first collection of poems, R. A. W, was published in 1995, winning an Excelle Literary Award. Transformatrix (2000) is her second book of poems. 

Diran Adebayo

British-born novelist of Nigerian origin. Has also worked in broadcast journalism and written short stories and a screenplay, ‘Burnt’ for the UK-based FilmFour. In 1995, his novel, Some Kind of Black (1996), won the inaugural SAGA Prize for first-time novelists. His second novel, My Once Upon a Time (2000) was also well received. Other honours include the Betty Trask Award (1997), Authors’ Club Best Novel of the Year (1996) and Writers’ Guild (New Writer of the Year, 1996) Awards.

Diana Evans

Writer and journalist of Nigerian origin, widely published UK newspapers, magazines and specialist journals. She has also written for anthologies of mostly Black writing in Britain, including IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain and Serpent’s Tail’s anthology of stories by wiomen, Kin. Her award-winning novel is 26A.

Dorothea Smartt

Poet, spoken word artist and Poetry Editor of Sable LitMag, she is of Barbadian heritage. Connecting Medium, her first poetry collection was published in 2001. She has taught Creative Writing, part-time, at Birbeck College and Leeds University, and was Visiting Writer at Florida International University and Oberlin College. Former Poet in Residence at Brixton Market and Attached Live Artist at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, her outstanding solo work, Medusa, is a performance poetry and visuals show, with which she has toured the UK and other countries. She also toured London schools with her first play, fall out, and is well represented in anthologies of Black writing in Britain.  

Leila Aboulela

Sudanese novelist and playwright. ‘The Museum,’ her story from the collection, Coloured Lights (2001), won the first Caine Prize for African Writing. Her novels, The Translator (1999) and Minaret (2005), have been longlisted for the IMPAC and  Orange literary prizes. Her plays, including ‘The Mystic Life’ (2003) have been been broadcast on radio.

James Gibbs

Currently at the University of Western England, he has previously worked in the Ministry of Education, Sudan, and taught at universities in Africa - Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria. His scholarly interests and publications have focused on African literature, particularly performance and the theatre. Books include African Theatre: Playwrights and Politics (Femi Osofisan, co-ed, 2001), FonTonFrom: Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film (Kofi Anyidoho, co-ed, 2000), African Theatre in Development (Martin Banham and Femi Osofisan, co-eds, 1999) and African Writers’ Handbook (Jack Mapanje, co-ed, 1999). His research work has also included book chapters and conference papers on African Literature. He was Consultant to a 1987 UK Channel 4 television programme on the Nigerian author.

Grace Nichols

Poet and fiction writer from Guyana. Her first poetry collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Its film Adaptation won a gold medal at the New York International Film and Television Festival. She has also won the Guyana Poetry Prize (1996) and the Cholmondeley Award (2000). Other poetry collections include The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984), Sunris (1996) and Startling the Flying Fish (2006). She edited Black Poetry (1988), and is included  in A Dangerous Knowing: Four Black Women Poets (1985) and Penguin Modern Poets Volume 8 (1996). Her prose-fiction includes the novel, Whole of a Morning Sky (1986), and among her many works for children are Come into My Tropical Garden ((1988)) and Everybody Got a Gift (2005). A publicised Sierra Leonian connection assured Nichol’s poetry a presence in early anthologies of West African poetry, recommended for schools there.

Bonnie Greer

Born in Chicago, USA. She is author of the novel, Hanging By Her Teeth (1994), but she has been better known in the UK as a television critic and playwright, with plays and musicals for BBC Radio, the National Theatre Studio, UK, and the National Theatre of Sweden. She has been involved with community theatre with UK women and ethnic minorities, and is winner of a Verity Bargate Award for Best New Play. In 2004, her co-produced documentary, ‘Reflecting Skin’ was shown by the BBC. Her acclaimed play ‘Munda Negra’ was included in Black Plays 3 (Yvonne Brewster, ed, 1993). Other works include the musical ‘Solid’ and ‘Jitterbug’ (2001).

Eric &Jessica Huntley

Founders of Bogle L’Overture, a pioneering publisher in the development of contemporary writings from Black Britain and the Commonwealth. Published key early works from Walter Rodney, Maya Angelou and Paul Marshall, also working with others in book promotions and Black literacy projects.

Steve Pope & Dotun Adebayo

Founders and Co-Directors of Xpress Books, a leading publisher of Black and African books in Europe. Xpress is credited with heading the development of a market for ‘Black contemporary or urban fiction in the UK, with introductions of bestselling authors like Victor Headley (the Yardie series) and Patrick Augustus (the Babyfather series). Other Xpress favourites include Karlie Smith (Moss Side Massive), Ijeoma  Inyama (Sistas on a Vibe), Phyllis Blunt (Bursting the Cherry) and Naomi Richard (Single Black Female).

Nana Wilson-Tagoe

Project Leader, AHRB Centre for Asian and African Literatures and Member, Centre of African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS, London. Author of Historical Thought and Literary Representation in West Indian Literature (1998).

Zena Edwards

Poet and performing artist, using a fusion of African rhythms and instruments with techno vibes and recording systems to create original supporting music for her poems and stories. She has performed in Africa, working with African musicians, and has also worked in radio for the BBC and on short films for Sky Digital television. Her two spoken word and music CDs are Healing Pool and Mine 4 Life.

Ferdinand Dennis

Born in Jamaica, he is the author of two travelogues, Behind the Frontiers: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) and Back to Africa: A Journey (1992). He has also presented special broadcast shows on Africa and Black Britain for BBC Radio 4 and TV’s Channel 4. Dennis has lectured in Nigeria. His writings include the novels, The Last Blues Dance (1996), Duppy Conqueror (1998) and The Sleepless Summer (1989).  

Victor Hedley

Born in Jamaica. Bestselling author of the novels, Yardie (1992), Excess (1993), Yush (1994), Fetish (1995), Here Comes the Bride (1997), Off Duty (2001) and Seven Seals (2003). His novels helped to launch noted independent black publisher, X Press.

Aminatta Forna

Journalist and author of Sierra Leonian origin, her memoir, The Devil that Danced on the Water (2000) was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. The Ancestor Shoes, her novel of the diasporic experience, was published in 2006. She is also the author of Mother of All Myths (1998) and Black British Cultures (2000). There are also chapter contributions to other books and much media involvement. Several roles as a judge of the MacMillan African Writers Prize (2003), the Samuel Johnson Prize (2004) and the Caine Prize for African Writing (2005).

Sarah Penny

Born and educated in Cape Town, South Africa, she is the author of The Whiteness of Bones (1997) and The Beneficiaries (2002). She contributes to several publications in South Africa and the UK, where she lectures in Creative Writing (Brunel University, London).

Yvette Hutchinson

Came to the University of Warwick, England, after long-term studies, research and teaching assignments in South African universities. She was also from 1987-1994 the South African correspondent for the International Bibliography of Theatre, and has been Assistant Editor of the South Africa Theatre Journal since 1992. Among her publications are Open Space: An Introduction to African Theatre (Kole Omotosho, co-ed, 1995) and History and Theatre in Africa (Eckhard Breitinger, ed, 2000). There are also book chapters and conference and other project contributions and involvements. 

Stephanie Newell

Research experience in African, especially West African, Studies. Research interests include West African literature, African newspaper culture, African readerships, the history of homosexuality in Africa and postcolonial theory. Publications include the books, West African Literatures: Ways of Reading (2006), The Forger’s Tale: The Search for Odeziaku (2006), Ghanaian Popular Fiction: ‘Thrilling Discoveries in Popular Life’ and Other Tales (2000), Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana: ‘How to Play the Game of Life’ (2002). She has also introduced and edited Readings in African Popular Fiction (2001) and Marita, or the Folly of Love: A Novel by a Native (2002).

Graham Pechey

Born in Durban, South Africa. Still engaged part time with the Academy in Cambridge, after teaching for many years in African and UK universities. Contributed essays to, and served in editorial boards of, literary and academic journals on South African Literature. 

Derek Attridge

Born in Natal, South Africa. Has lived in the UK since the late 1960s, studying and then teaching in various British universities. Widely published critic of South African Literature, especially work by Coetzee.

Andrew van der Vlies

South African Literary critic, currently working in Britain. Has worked extensively on South African writing. His studies, reviews and other commentaries are widely published in many specialist journals and the general media. Reviews Editor of Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, his monograph, South African Textual cultures: White, Black, Read All Over was published this year, 2007, by the Manchester University Press. He is Associate Editor of The Oxford Companion to the Book (forthcoming in 2010). Guest-edited an issue of the Routledge/UNISA journal Scrutiny2, entitled 'South
African Cultural Texts and the Global Mediascape'

Isobel Dixon

South African poet, translator and literary agent. Won the 2000 Sanlam Literary Award with her poetry volume, Weather Eye (2001). Her work has appeared in many literary journals and in the UK anthologies New Writing 8 (1999), New Writing 10 (2001) and other publications of the series.

Lindiwe Dovey

South African writer, photographer and filmmaker. She ran the Cambridge African Film Festival as African programmer at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse Cinema. She has published fiction, poetry, film reviews and academic papers, worked as choreographer for the Cambridge Dance Company and has made two short films, Nina and Perfect Darkness. 

Lola Shoneyin

Nigerian poet. Her two poetry volumes are So All the Time I Was Sitting on an Egg (1997) and Song of a Riverbird (2002). A novel, ‘Seed,’ is with the publishers. She has worked in publishing andcontributed to several anthologies and journals. She now lives in Britain with her family.

Gary Younge

Journalist aand author born in Britain, from Barbados. New York City Correspondent for The Guardian newspapers. Noted for his brave, incisive reports and revealing commentaries from a progressive Black British perspective.  Publications include No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the American South (1999) and Stranger in A Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States (2006). 

Brendon Nichols

South African. University of Leeds (African literatures and Cultures, Institute of Colonial and Postcolonial Studies). Research presentations on South African Apartheid Cinema, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Dambudzo Marachera  and other African writers. Editorial Board memberships of The Journal of Commonwealth Studies, Postcolonial Text, and the International Journal of African and African-American Studies.

Helen Oyeyemi

Nigerian novelist and playwright. Novels include The Icarus Girl (2006) and The Opposite House (2007). Her plays, published by Methuen, are Juniper’s Whitening and Victemese.

The Slovo Sisters – Shawn, Gillian and Robyn

In the memoir, Every Secret Thing: My Family , My Country(1997), novelist Gillian tells the painful story of the difficult childhood the sisters had as children of two heroes of the South African anti- apartheid struggle, Joe Slovo and Ruth First. They have lived in Britain since 1964, where their mother fled for safety before she was assassinated with a letter bomb. Gillian’s ten novels include Ice Road (2004), shortlisted for the Orange Prize, Red Dust (2000) and Ties of Blood (1989). All three sisters have also worked in film, and Shawn the oldest, a screenwriter, also explores their difficult upbringing in the film, A World Apart, her first screenplay, directed by Chris Menges. It won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, 1987, and also the 1988 BAFTA Best Original Screenplay Award. She also wrote the screenplay for the film, Catch A Fire (2006), a historical work on apartheid in South Africa, and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001). Robyn, the youngest of the sisters, is in management at a film company but has also had a full career in theatre as a writer, producer and editor. She moved into development of film projects, working on such projects as TwentyFourSeven, A Room for Romeo Brass and Catch A Fire. 

Simi Bedford

Novelist of Nigerian origin. Her most recent work, Not With Silver (2007), has been published as an anniversary book, marking two hundred years of the Slavery Abolition Act, 1807. It continues the autobiographical strain of Bedford’s first novel, Yoruba Girl Dancing (1991), drawing from her personal and ancestral diasporic histories.

Trish Cooke

British-born playwright from Dominican Republic, and author of So Much, the acclaimed children’s fiction series which has won many awards. Published plays like ‘Black Street Mammy’, ‘No Place Like Home’ and ‘Running Dream’ included in several anthologies.

 Barbara Trapido

South African. Lives in Oxford. Won a Whitbread Prize in 1982 with her first novel, Brother of the More Famous Jack. Her fifth, The Travelling Hornplayer (1998), was shortlisted for the Whitbread and longlisted for the Booker. Frankie and Stankie, Trapido’s sixth novel was longlisted for the 2003 Booker.

Ruth Watson

University of Cambridge. Research interests in, and publications on, the social and cultural history of West Africa and African urban history. Literature is not her central subject but she has also contributed  study chapters and articles on historical African texts of literary interest. She is the author of ‘Civil Disorder is the Disease of Ibadan’: Civic Culture in a Yoruba City (2003).

Ike Okonta

Writer and Fellow of St Peter’s College, University of Oxford. Has also been a journalist and still frequently contributes essays and reviews to the media. Author (with Oronto Douglas) of Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights and Oil. A new book, When Citizens Revolt: Nigerian Elites, Big Oil and the Ogoni Struggle for Self-Determination, is expected from Africa World Press (2007).                                                                          

Nnorom Azuonye

London-based Nigerian publisher, poet and playwright. Author of the poetry collections, Letter to God and Other Poems (2003), and The Bridge Selection: Poems for the Road (2005). Established the Sentinel Poetry Movement  - the International Community of Poets in 2002, through which new poems and poets, especially from Africa, have been introduced online and in print. 

Mike Phillips

Born in Guyana but grew up in Britain, working as a journalist for the BBC between 1972 and 1983. Author of three books of mostly historical narratives and commentaries, including London Crossings: A Biography of Black Britain (2001) and Windrush:The Irressistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (with Trevor Phillips, 1998), he is, however, known for his crime fiction thrillers. Some of these novels are Blood Rights (1989), The Late Candidate (1990, winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction), Point of Darkness (1994), The Dancing Face (1997), which concerns the theft of a priceless African mask, and A Shadow of Myself (2000).  

Edson Burton

Academic, writer and spoken word artist. He has lectured on and promoted awareness of African diasporic history and culture, also working with the media for that purpose.

Gabriel Gbadamosi

Currently Creative and Performing Arts Fellow at Goldsmiths, London, with research interests in European, African and British drama. His plays include ‘Abolition’ (Bristol 1989), ‘Eshu’s Faust’ (Cambridge 1992), ‘Hotel Orpheu’ (Berlin 1994, Lisbon and Porto 1997, and Barcelona 2004), and ‘Shango’ (Amsterdam 1997). His play, Oga’s Ark (2004) was published in Bulgaria. He has worked on and published commissioned commentaries on diverse cultural and performance subjects for British cultual organisations, institutions and media.

Rommi Smith

British-born spoken word artist, noted for her socially conscious poetry supported by a fusion of Black music harmonies (jazz, soul sand funk). A featured performer in many British and international literary conferences and radio shows, she was Chair of the 1999 experimental people’s jury for the Booker Prize.

Beverley Naidoo

Born and raised in South Africa. As a student she joined the anti-apartheid struggles, leading to detention without trial and exile in the UK. Returned to South Africa, 1993, after Mandela’s freedom but continued to do work in Britain, writing for the theatre, and running workshops with the theatre director Olusola Oyeleye. Their collaboration produced her first stage play, ‘The Playground,’ a 2004 Time Out Critic’s Choice. Her novels include the 2000 Carnegie Medal winner, The Other Side of Truth and its sequel, Web of Lies. Fiction awards from Japan, the UK, the USA and Holland have also been given for her works, including Journey to Jo’burg, Chain of Fire, No Turning back, Out of Bounds and Baba’s Gift (co-written with her daughter, Maya).

Benita Parry

Born and educated in Cape Town, South Africa, of Jewish European ancestry. Settled in the UK in 1958 and was involved in fringe political activities for a long time. Author of Conrad and Imperialism: Ideological Boundaries and Visionary Frontiers (1983) and Honorary Professor at Warwick University, UK.

Francoise Parent-Ugochukwu

Awarded the French national honour of Chevalier des Palmes Academiques in 1994 for her work in strengthening the cultural and educational ties between France and Nigeria, she is published in French, and some English translation, as an academic and children’s novelist. Publications include studies on some leading African authors, and is currently engaged with the Paris-based CNRS-LLACAN research unit for projects in Cosmogonies in African Ethnolinguistics, Alterities in African Oral Literature and The development of Written Poetry in African Languages. Her work includes a research collection of popular Igbo folktales (2006), the first bilingual (standard)Igbo-French dictionary (2004) and a forthcoming French translation of Omenuko, an Igbo novel first published in 1933.

Tope Omoniyi

Professor of Sociolinguistics and performance poet with the stage name of ‘Sky’, his first volume of poems, Farting Presidents and Other Poems was published in 2001. There are also poems in anthologies and journals. Academic works include, The Sociolinguistics of Borderlands: Two Nations, One Community (2004), Cultures of Economic Migration (co-editor, with Suman Gupta, 2007), The Sociolinguistics of Identity (co-editor, with Goodith White, 2006) and Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion (co-editor, with Joshua Fishman, 2006).

Alexander McCall

Born in present Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), he was also brought up and educated there. Returned to work in Botswana as a Law Professor, helping to set up the law school there. He has written over 60 books, which are translated into about 39 languages. These include academic work, but he is known for his bestselling fiction, including the series of township and detective tales inspired by his African experience, No. 1 Ladies’ detective Agency. The Full Cup of Life(2004), the fifth novel of the series, won a Saga Award. Other fiction from him may be grouped into Children’s Books, Short Stories, 44 Scotland Street Series, The Sunday Philosophy Club Series and the Professor Dr. von Igelfield Entertainments. A former Professor Emeritus of Medical Law in Scotland, he was Vice Chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the UK, Chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee among other positions. Awards include The Crime Writers Association Dagger, the United Kingdom’s Author of the Year Award (2004) and the Martin Beck Award (Sweden). This year, 2007, he was honoured with a CBE by the Queen for services to Literature.

Stewart Brown

Poet, painter, editor and critic of African and Caribbean literatures, he taught in Jamaica, Wales, Nigeria and Barbados before settling at the University of Birmingham, where he is the Director, Centre of West African Studies. He is a winner of a Gregory Award in 1976. Apart from the four published volumes of his poetry, he has also published work from his research interests, including The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories (editor), The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (editor with Mark McWatt, 2005), Kiss and Quarrel: Yoruba/ English: Stategies of Mediation (editor, 2001) and Tourist, Traveller, Troublemaker: Essays on Poetry (2007),

Nii Kwei Parkes

Ghanaian. Poet, BBC radio host. He has worked with and written for children and is a useful voice for the literatures of Africa in the UK, serving in various public initiatives for the arts. His poetry was recently featured as part of a Poetry Underground display introducing travellers to the work of some leading African poets. Co-editor (with Kadija Sesay) of Dance the Guns to Silence (poetry anthology, 2005). His poetry collections are eyes of a boy, lips of a man (1999) and M is for Madrigal (2004).

Molara Wood

London-based Nigerian poet, short story writer and arts journalist. She has read her poems at literary events in the UK, and written stories, reports and reviews  for publications in Nigeria, the US and Britain, including Electra magazine, Posse Review, BBC’s online Africa Beyond and the Guardian newspapers (Nigeria), and is extensively involved with Black and African literature promotions and cultural development in Britain, through her popular blog, Wordsbody, a uniquely versatile and rewarding resource centre for news on Black British and African writing.

Derek Peterson

Director, Cambridge African Studies. Research interests in African history, especially the colonial experience of Eastern Africa. Publications include Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (2004) and edited works, book chapters and articles on Kenya’s Mau Mau independence struggles, autobiographies in African languages and the creation of ‘African Traditional Religion’. 

Becky Ayebia Clarke

Born in Ghana but settled in the UK, 1974. Former Editor of the ground-breaking Heinemann African and Caribbean Writers Series, in which position she worked to publish and promote some of the most prominent writers from the two regions. Founded Ayebia Clarke Literary Agency & Publishing with husband, David, in 2003 after the closure of the AWS imprint to new titles in 2002. Ayebia has recently published  the latest work of Zimbabwean author, Tsi Tsi Dangarembga, and a collection of short stories by African women writers.

Beryl Gilroy

Guyanese novelist and children’s books author. Died in 2001, aged 76. Her work and literary activism related to Black immigrant experiences in Britain and explorations of African and Caribbean diasporic relations and experiences in the slavery era. Publications include Black Teacher (1976), Frangipani House (1986), Boy Sandwich (1989), Steadman and Joana (1996).

David Johnson

Open University. Research presentations and publications on South African and Southern African Literature and culture, also on Shakespeare and the postcolonial.    

Graham Furniss

Professor of African language and Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Publications include Orality: the Power of the Spoken Word (2004), Second Level Hausa: Grammar in Action (1991), Poetry, Prose and Popular Culture in Hausa (1996) and Ideology in Practice: Hausa Poetry as Exposition of Values and Viewpoints (1995). His book chapters, reviews and conference papers have also widely represented, much of it dealing with his core interests in African oral cultures.

Patrick Augustus

Novelist. Author of When a Man Loves a Woman (1995), and the Baby Father Series, published by X Press. The Baby Father books have been made into a successsful BBC TV series.

Dennis Walder

Literature Chair, Open University. Educated in South Africa. Research work on major African writers, especially South African writers and writing, among other interests. His books include works on Athol Fugard and the critical anthology, Literature in the Modern World.

Osita Okagbue

Nigerian. Goldsmiths London University. Main research interests in African theatre and performance, Caribbean theatre and theatre-for-development. He has presented papers and published chapters in these areas. Associate Editor for the Theatres of the World Series, (Routldge) and Editorial Adviser for Enyo: Journal of African Theatre and Drama.  

Dan Jacobson

Born in South Africa, moving to the UK in 1955, the same year he published his first novel The Trap. Also author of other novels, including A Dance in the Sun, The Rape of Tamar and The God-Fearer. Has also written short stories and poems, some memoir and travel writing, including The Electronic Elephant and Hershel’s Kingdom. He has also translated work from Dutch and is Professor Emeritus in English at University College, London. Among his awards are the W. Somerset Maugham and J. R. Ackerley Prizes. 

Lindiwe Mabuza

High commissioner of South Africa in Britain. Has held senior diplomatic positions for the South African ANC during the freedom struggles and then for the government , to the USA, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Finland,  among other places. She is also a poet, with the following publications: Malibongwe, One Never Knows – poetry and short stories by African National Congress Women (editor), and four collections of poetry – From ANC to Sweden, Letter to Letta, African to Me and Voices that Lead.

John Iliffe

Professor at Cambridge. Research interests and publications on African history. His books include, A modern history of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979) The African poor: a history (Cambridge, 1987) and Africans: the history of a continent (Cambridge, 1995)

Ruth Finnegan

Fieldwork in Sierra Leone  and a doctorate on Limba story-telling , with teaching experience in Africa marked her long term work in the field of African and Anthropological Studies, especially on the anthropology of communication, oral literature and performance, literacy, music-making in Africa and Britain. Continues as a Fellow of the British Academy, Honorary fellow of Sommerville College, University of Oxford, Visiting Research Professor and Professor Emeritus at the Open University. OBE in 2000 for her distinguished services.

Richard Synge

Wolfson College, Cambridge. Journalist, editor, Assistant director of The Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme, which has hosted African fellows. Senior Editor of The Africa Report, an English publication of Jeune Afrique, Paris, has written extensively in the media on diverse African issues.

Jean Khalfa

 Trinity College. Publications and research interests in French Caribbean and North African  Literatures. He is a member of the editorial board of Wasafiri.

Brian Chikwava

Zimbabwean writer. Winner of the 2004 Caine Prize for African Writing with his short story, ‘Seventh Street Alchemy’.

Valerie Tagwira

Zimbabwean author of The Uncertainty of Hope (2007), a novel.

Baroness Lola Young

Author, scholar, former actress and Member, House of Lords, with long term involvement with providing institutional support for the Black and African cultures of Britain. Was Project Director of the Archive and Museum of Black Heritage, 1997. Emeritus Professor at of Culture at Middlesex University and Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. OBE in 2001. Publications include Fear of the Dark: ‘Race’, Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema (Routeledge).

Alastair Niven

Awarded an OBE, and became, in 2001, Principal of the King George V1 and Queen Elizabeth Foundation of St Catherine’s at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor. He had been Director of Literature at the British Council for four years, Director of Literature at the Arts Council of Britain (later Arts Council of England) for ten years and Director General of The Africa Centre from 1978-1984. He had also taught at the Universities of Ghana, Leeds and Stirling. Long term involvement in the promotion and development of African literature and culture in Britain.

Sam Selvon

From Trinidad and Tobago. Pioneer Black British author of The Lonely Londoners (1956), and a lot more.  A contemporary of Barbadian George Lamming (The Emmigrants, 1954) and Andrew Salkey.

Karen McCarthy

Poet, playwright and literary workshop facilitator. Editor of the groundbreaking anthologies of women’s poetry, BittersweetL: Black women’s poetry () and KIN: Black and Asian and Women’s Fiction (2003).

Koye Oyedeji

Writer and journalist. Short stories have appeared in The Fire People (1998), IC3 (2000), Write Black, Write British (2005) and Tell Tales Vol 111 (2006).

Kaye Whiteman 

Lived in Nigeria, 2001-2002, as a publishing consultant, and has a long career connection with Africa, as Editor and then General Manager of West Africa magazine, which had a significant interest in African culture, including the literature. Was later Director of Information and Public Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat. He is now a publishing consultant and a board member of the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

Mary Jay#

Secretary to the Noma Award Managing Committee and jury member for the prize, her most notable role in African writing has been as Head of the African Books Collective, ABC, a pioneering role in providing access to the international market outside Africa for books published in the continent. Once Deputy to the Head of Hans Zell Publishers, she has also served as a trustee of the Southern African Book Development Education Trust, SADBET. She was Deputy Editor of The African Book Publishing Record and joint editor (with Susan Kelly) of Courage and Consequence: Women Publishing in Africa (2002).

 S. I. Martin

Author of Incomparable World (1996), Britain’s Slave Trade (1999) and the recent Jupiter Williams (2007), he was born in Bedford and works in the UK as a researcher and writer of Black history.

Richard Bartlett  

Involved as a director, translator, editor, etc, with Aflame Books, an independent publisher in the UK with a growing reputation for releasing works in English translation by African writers and other non-English speaking writers. A journalist with the Financial Times, London, Bartlett was co-editor (with Morakabe Raks Seakhoa) of the unique and much acclaimed collection of poems, Halala Madiba: Nelson Mandela in Poetry.