Introducing our new co-chairs and board of trustees!

Mónica Ibarra Parle is Co-Executive Director of Forward Arts Foundation and Associate Director of El Nuevo Sol: British Latinx Writers. She was previously Executive Director of First Story, the young people’s writers’ development charity. She is on the Board of the World of Books Foundation, and she’s a fiction writer, having won the Mslexia 2022 Short Story Competition, and her work has been published in The Bridport Anthology 2024, Best Women’s Short Fiction 2022, The Bridport Anthology 2021, and Wasafiri.

Cecilia Rossi is Professor of Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, where she convenes the MA in Literary Translation and works for British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) as Postgraduate and Professional Liaison. Her latest translation, The Last Innocence and The Lost Adventures (Alejandra Pizarnik) published by Ugly Duckling Presse was shortlisted for the National Translation Awards for Poetry (ALTA) in 2020.

Matthew Beavers is Literature Relationship Manager at the British Council where he oversees literature programmes in the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the EU. He specialises in contemporary poetry, spoken word, and storytelling, and has managed international literature partnerships and skills development programmes on four continents. He initiated the LGBTQIA+ poetry exchange Language is a Queer Thing between India and the UK in 2022, and helped develop the project Unwritten Poems, which commissioned Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora poets to write new poems reflecting on the role of the Caribbean in WW1. From 2010 to 2015 he was project coordinator for the British Council Literature Seminar in Berlin, which has brought new literary voices from the UK to Germany for over 30 years. Before joining the British Council, Matt worked for the British Embassy in Berlin and taught English in Berlin and Vienna. He read European Studies and German at UEA Norwich.

Supriyo is an educator, entrepreneur and writer based in London. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of e1133, an organisation that works with leading universities to prepare students for the Future of Work. Supriyo’s professional interests are in global higher education, particularly interdisciplinary education and the changing nature of work and careers. As part of his work, he has written extensively on education, economic empowerment and skill formation. His blog on the subject has over twenty thousand followers and got him invited to deliver workshops and programmes all over the world. Supriyo is a member of London’s South Asian diaspora and has played an active role in community organisation and served as the trustee of a leading diaspora think-tank. A collection of Supriyo’s poetry – Monsoonami – has recently been published in India by Paulsen Publishers.

Will Forrester is Head of Literature Programmes at English PEN. He edited All Walls Collapse: Stories of Separation (2022), led the editorial team for My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women (2022), and has been a judge for the TA First Translation Prize and the US National Translation Award. He is also a Director of Untold Narratives, an Independent Expert for Creative Europe, and a Trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He sits on the advisory boards of BookBrunch, Translator magazine, and Sinoist Books. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, London Magazine, and elsewhere.

Jennifer Lee Tsai is an award-winning poet, writer and artist. She was born in Bebington and grew up in Liverpool. She is a fellow of The Complete Works, a Ledbury Poetry Critic and a former Contributing Editor to Ambit. Her poetry and literary criticism are widely featured in publications including The Guardian, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Telegraph, TheTLS; The White Review as well as on BBC Radio 4. She is the author of two poetry pamphlets, Kismet (ignitionpress, 2019) and La Mystérique (Guillemot Press, 2022). Jennifer as received a Northern Writers Award for Poetry and is a winner of the Rebecca Swift Foundation’s Women Poets’ Prize. She has worked as a lecturer and teacher of English to students in universities and colleges as well as within community settings. She is the recipient of an AHRC doctoral scholarship in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool and an Artist in Residence at the Bluecoat. Her first full-length poetry collection is forthcoming with Bloodaxe in 2026.

Jorge Llorens has worked for more than 20 years in the finance sector, in London and Madrid. Throughout his career in investment and corporate banking, he has held senior management roles in international organizations such as Goldman Sachs, EBRD and BBVA, in areas such as Mergers & Acquisitions advisory and Client Coverage.

Jorge is also a Treasurer and Trustee at Voluntary Action Islington.

Bernie is a VCSE Systems & Governance Leader working closely with NHS Trusts, schools across the sectors and demographics, Non-Profits, the Criminal Justice System and Social Enterprises; a Changemaker and an Ambassador with the Institute for Economics and Peace; Chair, Governor and Trustee of several organisations and happy governance nerd. In a lifetime of working alongside people experiencing complex disadvantage or detriment, the value and impact of language has been a constant crucial thread. Challenging the status quo and supporting positive practice have been fundamental to how she firmly seeks to address co-existing inequality creatively and positively. Celebrating in the description, warmly intended as a compliment, of Fluffy Battleaxe she enjoys the opportunities to influence and impact that come her way, excited and awed to be part of this organisation. In a world that abuses and weaponises words, using them to explore and promote cultural partnerships is an act of gentle rebellion. Bernie likes gentle rebellion.

Bohdan Piasecki is a poet from Poland based in Birmingham. A committed performer, he has taken his poems from the upstairs room in an Eastbourne pub to the main stage of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from underground Tokyo clubs to tramways in Paris, from a bookshop in Beijing to an airfield in Germany, from niche podcasts to BBC Radio. In the UK, he regularly features at the country’s most exciting spoken word nights, festivals, and readings. He enjoys the creative chaos of big field festivals just as much as the composed concentration of literary events.

Bohdan founded the first poetry slam in Poland before moving to the UK to get a doctorate in Translation Studies from the University of Warwick. He has worked as Director of Education on the Spoken Word in Education MA course at Goldsmiths University, and was the Midlands Producer for Apples and Snakes between 2010 and 2017. Since 2012, he has been a regular Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. He currently holds the post of Creative Producer at Beatfreeks.

Janet Remmington is a scholarly publisher, researcher, reviewer, and writer. She works as journals editorial director for the global Arts & Humanities programme and regional director for Africa at Routledge, Taylor & Francis. With two decades of publishing experience, she has pioneered interdisciplinary publications and partnership arrangements, and championed global South authorship and resource access. In her research capacity, Janet has published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on African literature, and she co-edited Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa: Past and Present, which won the 2018 Non-Fiction Prize from South Africa’s National Institute for Humanities and the Social Sciences. She is completing a cultural history of black South African travel texts for a PhD at the University of York. Janet has Masters degrees in English Literature (University of Cape Town), African Studies (University of Oxford), Creative Writing (Royal Holloway, University of London) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Studies in Publishing (Oxford Brookes). She has published creative non-fiction, poetry, and reviews in literary magazines, while facilitating creative exchanges and publication opportunities across borders.

Tatevik Sargsyan is a social change practitioner working on strategic development, design and delivery of social change programmes. In her previous roles at The Young Foundation and Design Council, she supported a range of social enterprises to deliver scalable social impact in the UK and worked across various social change initiatives including education and young people, arts and culture, mental health and financial inclusion. She has also worked with arts organisations and written for cultural magazines, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in London and Lisbon, where she developed The Calouste Gulbenkian Translation Series. She is interested in the civic role of the arts and developing narratives which bridge divides and act as a catalyst for social change. Tatevik is bilingual in Armenian and English, fluent in German and also studied Russian, Spanish and Portuguese. Currently, she is a Senior Designer at the RSA and Founding Editor of Anamot Press.

Niroshini Somasundaram is a poet and writer based in London. With a background in law, she currently works for a charity for children and young people.