UK/US Poets Together: Covid-19 Fundraiser

Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian American poet and the author of Hijito (Platypus Press, 2019), winner of the 2018 Broken River Prize. Winner of the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, Gómez’s writing has been published in the New England Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, CHORUS: A Literary Mixtape (Simon & Schuster, 2012), and elsewhere. Carlos appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Nadine Aisha Jassat is a poet and writer who has contributed to It’s Not About the Burqa (Picador) and 404 Ink’s highly-praised Nasty Women. Her debut poetry collection Let Me Tell You This was shortlisted for the prestigious Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and was recently included in Jackie Kay’s selection of ten compelling BAME writers working in the UK for the National Centre for Writing’s International Literature Showcase.

British born Barbadian raised artist, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, also known as Birdspeed, is the Edinburgh Fringe Slam Champion 2019, the 2019 Hammer and Tongue UK National Slam Champion and a 2019 BBC Words First Finalist. Birdspeed is published in the following anthologies: Alter Egos Anthology (Bad Betty Press, 2019), Use Words First (Own It, 2019) and Words on Windrush (Empoword, 2019).  She has also self-published her first pamphlet Bloom (2019) which is endorsed by Junior Marvin from The Original Wailers.

Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, playwright and author. Taylor founded SLAMbassadors, the UK’s national youth slam championships, for the Poetry Society in 2001, and was its Artistic Director and National Coach until 2018. She is the host and co-curator of Out-Spoken, the UK’s Centre’s premier poetry and music club, resident at the Southbank Centre Purcell Room. Taylor is the author of three poetry collections, three plays, and a collection of short stories, The Night Alphabet (forthcoming). She is widely anthologised and her work is taught as part of the OCR GCSE syllabus. A Radio 4 documentary about her work, Butch, was broadcast in 2020. She has also featured on The Verb R3, Power Lines R4, Poetry Please Radio 4, Educating the East End (ITV), and We Belong Here (BBC).Taylor is a Fellow of the RSA, received a Change Maker Award from the Southbank Centre in recognition of the impact SLAMbassadors has had on British culture, and was longlisted for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2017 and 2019.

Nikita Gill is a British-Indian writer and poet living in the south of England. Her works include Fierce Fairytales: & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul (2019), Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters (2019), The Girl and The Goddess (2020). Her most recent book Where Hope Comes From: Poems of Resilience, Healing and Light was published in 2021. With over 500,000 followers, Nikita is one of the most popular poets on Instagram.

Ian McMillan is a writer and broadcaster who presents The Verb on BBC Radio 3 every Friday night. He’s written poems, plays, a verse autobiography Talking Myself Home and a voyage round Yorkshire in Neither Nowt Nor Summat. Ian is poet-in-residence for The Academy of Urbanism, Barnsley FC and now Barnsley Poet Laureate. He’s a regular on BBC Breakfast, Coast, Countryfile, Pointless Celebrities, Pick of the Week, Last Word and BBC Proms Plus.

Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer & educator. Executive Director of Bowery Poetry Club & Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC & Poetry Coordinator at St. Francis College. She is the author of Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby & Black Girl Magic (Macmillan), Kissing Caskets (Yes Yes Books) & Dear Twitter (Penmanship Books). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.