Hannah Azieb Pool (Author)
Hannah Azieb Pool is Artistic Director & CEO of the Bernie Grant Arts Centre and founder of the Tottenham Literature Festival. A journalist for over 20 years, Hannah Azieb has written for many international publications including The Guardian, The Times, Stylist and Vogue Magazine UK. Hannah Azieb is the author of two books: Fashion Cities Africa and My Fathers' Daughter, and was Associate Editor of Arise Magazine. Hannah Azieb was previously the Senior Programmer for Contemporary Culture at the Southbank Centre, where she curated Africa Utopia, the annual festival celebrating arts and ideas from across Africa and the diaspora, she was also a lead programmer of the WOW Women of the World festival.

Hannah Azieb is a trustee of LIFT (the London International Festival of Theatre), and on the Artist's Advisory Board of the Manchester International Festival and a patron of the SI Leeds prize for unpublished fiction by UK Black and Asian women.

Bernardine Evaristo (Introducer)
Bernardine Evaristo, MBE, is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other made her the first black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019, as well winning the Fiction Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2020, where she also won Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award. She also became the first woman of colour and black British writer to reach No.1 in the UK paperback fiction chart in 2020. Her writing spans reviews, essays, drama and radio, and she has edited and guest-edited national publications, including The Sunday Time's Style magazine. Her other awards and honours include an MBE in 2009. Bernardine is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and President of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London with her husband.
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