Abdilatif Abdalla (born 1946 in Mombasa) is a Kenyan writer and political activist. He was imprisoned for his support of the Kenya People’s Union, and wrote the poems collected in Sauti ya Dhiki while in solitary confinement, which were subsequently awarded the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. After he was awarded the Jomo Kenyatta Prize […]
Syed Shah Saud is a talented young Pashto poet, born in Peshawar, the biggest city in the Pashtoon inhabited parts of Pakistan, in 1970. He has done an MA in Philosophy from Peshawar University and teaches literature at Government College Peshawar. Shah Saud is known for his originality of thought and a peculiar style in […]
Javed Akhtar is a highly respected Urdu poet who grew up in a family steeped in the traditions of classical poetry. In addition to writing poetry he is an award winning screen-play writer for Bollywood. Like Zehra Nigah, his poems use both classical and new forms.
Zehra Nigah from Pakistan is a highly regarded poet in a culture in which poetry is almost universally popular. In the Urdu tradition she was one of the first women poets to challenge the traditional roles of women. As a child her life was filled with poetry and like Javed Akhtar she uses both traditional […]
Thai poet and artist Uten Mahamid is the author of thirteen collections of free-verse poetry, several of them published as handmade books, including one that was shortlisted for the S.E.A Write Award. He has also penned collections of short stories and a children’s book. One key mode of his poetry is telling stories through single […]
Mui Poopoksakul is a lawyer-turned-translator with a special interest in contemporary Thai literature. Her first book-length translation, The Sad Part Was by Prabda Yoon, won a PEN Translates award and will be published by Tilted Axis Press in early 2017. Mui’s work has also appeared in various literary journals, including Words without Borders, Two Lines, […]
Marion Molteno is a prize-winning novelist whose writing draws on the unusual cultural range of her life experience. If you can walk, you can dance won a Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for the best book from Africa, and two of her novels feature oral poetry – Urdu and Persian poetry in her latest novel, Uncertain Light, […]
Bejan Matur is the most illustrious poet among a bold new women’s poetry emerging from the Middle East. Her poetry engages directly and concretely with the struggles of her people, and yet there is also a mysticism in her writing, a closeness to nature, an embracing of mythology – a dialogue with God. Bejan Matur […]
Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Her first book, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Sunday Times / PFD Young Writer of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Born in Hong Kong to an English father […]