Meeting with International Writers
Curated by WritersMosaic, a division of the Royal Literary Fund, it's an online magazine and developmental resource focused on UK writers of the global majority, reflecting the changing reality of contemporary Britain, from its past and into its future.

Part one: 10,00am

The Magazine, the Project

In conversation with WritersMosaic and Colin Grant, British novelist.

Part two: 10,45am – 1,00pm

Points of View. Who controls the Narrative?

Reflecting on Life and Writing choices with the authors: Colin Grant, Wallis Wilde Menozzi, Jo Clement, Vanessa Kisuule, Damian Le Bas, Ming Ho, Nicole Rachelle Moore and Zebib K. Abraham.

The meeting will be lead by Wallis Wilde Menozzi, American writer.

WRITERS' BIOGRAPHIES

COLIN GRANT

Colin Grant’s seven books include Bageye at the Wheel, short-listed for the Pen Ackerley Prize, and Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. His latest book is I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be. Grant is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and director of WritersMosaic, an online magazine and division of the Royal Literary Fund. He also writes for a number of newspapers including the TLS, Guardian, Observer and New York Review of Books.

JO CLEMENT

Born in Darlington and based in Newcastle, Jo Clement is a working-class poet and interdisciplinary maker of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller ethnicity. She has a doctorate, is a Northern Writers' Award winner and lectures in Creative Writing at Northumbria University.

Jo Clement teaches Creative Writing at Northumbria University, selects and reviews collections for the Poetry Book Society and is a Northern Writers’ Award winner. BBC Radio appearances include Enchanted Isle, Northern Drift, Poetry Please and Start the Week. Their debut poetry collection Outlandish (Bloodaxe Books, 2022) is shortlisted for the John Pollard International Poetry Prize. 

Jo is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has worked as a personal tutor, mentor, workshop leader, and facilitator in various capacities for over fifteen years. Professional partnerships include refugee and asylum seeker support networks, state schools, universities, prisons, ESL summer schools, NHS prescribed mental health support routes, museums, and art galleries.

VANESSA KISUULE

Vanessa Kisuule is a poet, writer and performer based in Bristol. She has won over ten slam titles including The Roundhouse Slam 2014, Hammer and Tongue National Slam 2014 and the Nuoryican Poetry Slam. She has been featured on BBC iPlayer, Radio 1, and Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Blue Peter, Don't Flop and TEDx in Vienna. She has appeared at an array of literary and music festivals and was Glastonbury Festival's Resident Poet in 2019. She has been invited to perform all over the world from Belgium to Brazil to Bangladesh.

“I am a gifted shapeshifter, able to adjust myself to the rules of almost any environment. But I’m tired of shrinking. Belonging is a fairy tale. I wish to be with the unruly people.”

DAMIAN LE BAS

Damian James Le Bas is a British writer and journalist from West Sussex in England best known for his book The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain, published in 2018, a mixture of memoir, travel writing and an exploration of Romani history in Britain In June 2018, the book was featured on BBC Radio 4 as book of the week.

“This talk of blood, whether Travellers know it or not, is metaphorical. A child does not ‘have’ anyone’s blood but its own. Travellers don’t mince words. If you ask a Traveller a serious question, you can expect a serious answer couched in unpretentious terms. With the Romanies – a name that comes not from Romanian, as many people presume, but from an old Indian word meaning ‘husband’, ‘man’ or simply ‘one of us’ – blood is a serious matter. My Romany relatives rarely called themselves anything but Travellers, though for them this word meant ethnic Romanies, and that meant a bond of culture, but also a bond of blood.”

MING HO

Ming Ho writes for stage, screen, and audio drama. Her play, The Things We Never Said (BBC R4; featuring Siân Phillips and Lia Williams), won WGGB Best Radio Drama Award, 2018. Other credits include EastEnders, Casualty (BBC TV); Heartbeat, The Bill (ITV); Riot Girls: Male Order (BBC R4), and commissions for LAMDA, RADA, Leeds Playhouse, and Theatr Clwyd.

Born in England of Chinese/Welsh heritage, Ming wrote Citizens of Nowhere? for Chinese Arts Now (Southbank Centre & Edinburgh Fringe), exploring roots and identity in Brexit Britain. Its central character, aspiring Tory politician Jane Lo, spawned short film British People, commissioned as part of The Uncertain Kingdom anthology (BFIPlayer, Amazon, iTunes, Curzon Home, GooglePlay, 2020). Ming has also worked in TV drama development, script editing series.

NICOLE RACHELLE MOORE

Nicole-Rachelle Moore is a writer, educator and the Curator of Caribbean Collections at the British Library. She has led courses on Andrea Levy and Toni Morrison, worked closely with the George Padmore Institute and is a member of New Beacon Books. She co-edited Dream To Change the World on the life of John La Rose and contributed to In Search of Mami Wata: Narratives and Images of African Water Spirits (2020).

ZEBIB K. ABRAHAM

She is a writer and psychiatrist who moved to Edinburgh in 2020 to complete an MFA in Creative Writing, with distinction, from the University of Edinburgh. She has published short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, in such publications as The Rumpus, Clarkesworld, PodCastle, Fantasy Magazine, Necessary Fiction, JMWW, and more. She is represented by Carleen L. Geisler at ArtHouse Literary Agency, and is currently on submission with her novel Terrible Animals. Over the years, she has been involved in the Scottish writing community through her work with the Scottish BPOC Writers network, the Edinburgh Writers’ club, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, and she has performed and/or led panels at the Aye festival, Cymera festival, the Scottish Storytelling festival, and Granite Noir festival. She has been commissioned as a storyteller for the Scottish Storytelling Centre at various events, including performing a piece for the Figures of Speech series. She was selected for the Edinburgh International Film festival critical writing commission, which involved writing a piece of film criticism as part of the program. As a mental health professional, she is passionate about the intersection between mental health and writing. She has  developped and run mental health and writing workshops and courses, in partnerships with groups like Chill Subs, to explore anxiety, inattention, and self-doubt around the writing process. She has worked with WritersMosaic to write articles for the website, particularly focused on film criticism.

https://writersmosaic.org.uk/