Judith Kerr OBE

Judith is an author and illustrator who fled from Nazi Germany as a child and went on to publish award-winning autobiographical novels for children about her experiences.


Nadifa Mohamed

Nadifa is a Somali-born novelist whose books have been shortlisted for prestigious awards including the Guardian First Book Award.


Vesna Maric

Vesna is a travel writer, journalist, and author of ‘Bluebird: a Memoir’.


al-Saddiq al-Raddi

al-Saddiq al-Raddi

al-Saddiq is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic. He writes about his native Sudan.


Marina Lewycka

Marina is an author whose first book, A short history of tractors in Ukrainian, sold over a million copies worldwide.


George Szirtes

George Szirtes

George Szirtes is a painter-turned-poet originally from Hungary who writes about England and Englishness as well as his Hungarian origins in his poetry and translation work.


Gillian Slovo

Gillian Slovo

Writing, for Gillian Slovo, is best described as a process of interrogation into what happens when individual lives are caught up in political events – her latter works explore her experience as the daughter of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa.


Hamid Ismailov

Hamid is a poet and author from Uzbekistan, and Writer in Residence at the BBC’s World Service.