Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo is an internationally bestselling, 2019 Booker Prize-winning writer of ten books and numerous other works. Her first non-fiction book, Manifesto, On Never Giving Up, was published in 2021. She is also a literary activist setting up many inclusion programmes for writers. Since 2020, she has been the curator of Black Britain: Writing Back for Penguin Random House, re-publishing books from the past. 

Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is the author of four non-fiction books, a collection of essays and nine novels. His books have won many prizes, and he holds six honorary doctorates. His work has been translated into over thirty languages, and he has served on the Jury of the Locarno and Venice film festivals.

Shafinaaz Hassim

Shafinaaz Hassim is a multi-award-winning author and sociologist from South Africa. Her more than fifteen titles have received international and local acclaim. In 2014, UNESCO listed her as one of the top 39 writers in Africa under the age of 40. 

The SALA and NIHSS awards and the UJ Prize for Creative Writing have commended her novels. 

Tendo Deborah Auko

Deborah Auko is a trained lawyer but a logistician by profession. She is the author of Rough Silk, a renowned memoir of an ordinary person that has been a best seller and Book of the Month. It has done a US tour and a UK tour. It was the only book from East Africa selected at the Cheltenham Literature Festival 2023 and celebrated its first anniversary in a sold-out event of 500 people at the KICC on the 18th of May 2024.