Our ‘Meet the Artist/Writer’ events showcased writers and artists from under-represented backgrounds and how they got their work ‘out there’.
Penny Pepper
Penny Pepper is a writer, poet and well-known rights activist. Her memoir First In The World Somewhere is published on 7 September by award-winning publishers Unbound. In 2018 Burning Eye Books will publish her highly anticipated first poetry collection.
Dean Atta
As a writer, performer and teacher of poetry, Dean Atta has worked across the UK and internationally. He came to poetry as a personal therapeutic tool but soon found his words resonated with many people when he started performing at open mic nights in London. Dean has published one full collection of poetry and is currently working on his second. This session will be a discussion about the personal and public purpose of poetry, publishing and performing your work.
Bernadette Russell
Bernadette Russel is a passionate champion of kindness, wonder, hope, joy and FUN! She is an author, performance storyteller, theatre maker, workshop facilitator, cabaret MC , playwright and tree planter. She performs her own stories as well as traditional stories everywhere- including cabarets, sheltered housing, schools, parks, gardens, forests, vintage clothes shops, launderettes, beaches, in peoples beds, once even inside a Police Box!
Akila Richards
Akila is a writer, poet and passionate spoken word artist. Some of her writing gives voice to the Black German experience and the multiple identities we occupy, when trying to fit in, front or simply wanting to disappear. Then comes another set of selfhoods, when setting up life abroad discovering new parts never reached, refitting culturally and setting new norms that used in different settings, depending on what’s acceptable or not, camouflaging, starting to leave bits of self out, forgetting some but not losing, adding and morphing. Writing provided a route for Akila to relive herself differently on the page through the varied characters and watch herself – sometimes in amazement – from the outside … in.
