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.
