Basma Abdel Aziz is an award-winning Egyptian writer, sculptor, psychiatrist and activist. A long-standing vocal critic of government oppression in Egypt, she writes a weekly political commentary column and is the author of several works of nonfiction. She was named one of Foreign Policy’s Leading Global Thinkers 2016 for her highly acclaimed debut novel, The […]
Ameer Alhussein is a Syrian Kurdish poet who writes in both Kurdish and Arabic. As a Kurd growing up in Syria under a regime that banned his mother tongue, he learnt to write in Kurdish without any support and outside of any institution. He was part of a group of young poets who published Inferno, […]
Alice Guthrie is a translator, editor and event producer specialising in contemporary Arabic literature and media. Since 2008 her translations have appeared in a range of international publications and venues, her work often focusing on Syria, where she studied Arabic between 2001 and 2003. As an editorial consultant she works bilingually on Arabic-English translations for […]
Dr. Alan Cummings is Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London. His research interests include kabuki dramaturgy and post-war performance. Recent publications include Haiku: Love (British Museum Press, 2013), and “Money is all that matters in the world” in Jones & Watanabe (eds.), A Tokyo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Modern Metropolis 1850-1920 (University of […]
Helen Mort was born in Sheffield. Her first collection ‘Division Street’ won the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize. Her collection ‘No Map Could Show Them’ (Chatto & Windus) is a PBS Recommendation. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing in the Manchester Writing School and, in 2017, presented ‘Mother Tongue’ on Radio 4, looking at poetry in […]
Kadhem Khanjar is a poet and performer from Iraq. Along with some friends he set up a project called ‘the Culture Militia,’ a group which performs poetry in sites of destruction and death including blown-up cars, minefields, bombed out-houses, ambulances, ISIS cages, and mass graves. His collection Picnic with an Explosive Belt was published in […]
Micha Meyers is a teacher of Dutch, a retired secondary level teacher and translator who lives in New Barnet, London. He studied at the University of East Anglia (UEA), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Groningen. He is a regular participant at the PTC’s regular Poetry Translation Workshops and in 2018 provided […]
Khairani Barokka is a writer, poet, artist, and PhD researcher at Goldsmiths in Visual Cultures. Published and working internationally, she is the writer/performer/producer of Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee, co-editor of HEAT: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology (Buku Fixi, 2016), Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, 2017), writer-illustrator of […]
Born in Osaka in 1977. Chief priest of Gannenji Buddhist temple, in Toyama. Studied with the modern tanka poet Ken Kasugai (1938-2004). Has published three volumes of poetry. Works as a poetry judge for the NHK tanka TV programme, and for the Mirai tanka society.
Gabriel Mwènè Okoundji was born in Okondo-Ewo, Republic of Congo, in 1962. He has lived in Bordeaux practising as a clinical psychologist since receiving a Congolese government grant to carry out his higher education there. His mixing with Occitan writers was a determining factor for the development of his poetry, and Occitan was the first […]