Abwe Lovett Ngwese was born in Bangem, the South West Region of Cameroon. He is 31 years old, and holds a Bachelor Degree in Law and Political Science from the University of Dschang. He lost his father due to the ongoing political crisis in his country, which also led Abwe flee from his country. He went through the lands of Iran and Turkey, and finally to Greece, where he was granted political asylum. He is a lover of the arts, and a composer of songs.
Ako Karim Ismail is from the Kurdistan Region in North Iraq. He is a journalist and has worked as a reporter and news editor for TV and newspapers in Kurdistan. He arrived in the UK in 2015 and now has asylum seeker status. During the last two years, he has been developing real experiences into written works about love, loss and safety, and hopes to write a book about his journey, family, and his explorations of humanity.
Alex Hales is an occasionally amiable 47-year-old author of one screenplay, Unhappy Together, and five short volumes on matters such as music, verse, and nightlife. The most recent of these, Stagehands In The Night, was an affectionately-scurillous trawl through the ne’er-do-wells of his hometown that would benefit your spare time greatly.
Allan Lake, originally from Saskatchewan, has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton, Ibiza, Tasmania & Melbourne. Poetry collection: Sand in the Sole (Xlibris, 2014). Lake won Lost Tower Publications (UK) Comp 2017, Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Fest 2018 and publication in NewPhilosopher 2020. Latest chapbook (Ginninderra Press 2020) My Photos of Sicily.
Amir Darwish is a British Syrian poet & writer of Kurdish origin who lives in London. Born in Aleppo, he came to Britain as an asylum seeker in 2003. He has a BA in History from Teesside University, UK, an MA in International Relations of the Middle East from Durham University, UK, and an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths University, UK. As a poet, he published his work in the UK, USA, Pakistan, India, Finland, Turkey, Canada, Singapore & Mexico. His work translated into Arabic, Bengali, Estonian, Finnish, Italian, Spanish and Turkish, amongst other languages. Twitter: @darwish_amir
Once a child refugee, Ana Fores-Tamayo advocates for marginalized refugee families from Mexico and Central America. Working with asylum seekers is heart-wrenching, so poetry is her escape. She has published in The Raving Press, Laurel Review, Indolent Books and many other anthologies and journals, online and in-print. Her poetry in translation & photography have been featured at home and internationally. Through poetry, she keeps tilting at windmills.
Dr Anastasia Christou is Associate Professor of Sociology at Middlesex University, London, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Anastasia is a long-term committed academic activist, trade unionist, feminist and anti-racist. As an interdisciplinary critical scholar, Anastasia’s research and poetry transcend geographies and cultures in meaningfully seeking social justice.
Andrew J. Calis is an Arab-American poet, teacher, and husband, and an overjoyed father of four. His first book of poetry, Pilgrimages (Wipf & Stock, 2020), was praised by James Matthew Wilson for having ‘the intensity of Hopkins’ and for ‘layer[ing] light on light in hopes of helping us to see.’ His work has appeared in America, Dappled Things, Presence, Convivium and elsewhere, and he teaches at Archbishop Spalding High School in Maryland.
Angela Zaher is a Lebanese-British freelance food and fiction writer. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon but has lived in Brussels and in Hong Kong making her home in London for over 20 years. Her two passions are food and writing and she has been dedicated to both since leaving the legal profession. Follow her weekly blog on Instagram: @angela_zaher
Anne Collins is a performer, writer and all-round creative person who is based in Leeds. She volunteers for Refugee Council on HARP, Women’s Health Matters at Rainbow Heart, and is part of ‘Lift the Ban’ campaign. She is Mafwa Theatre member since 2018 and this year became Mafwa Theatre Associate Artist to develop artistic skills. Anne regularly attends Theatre of Sanctuary workshops at Leeds Playhouse. She loves art, music, operas and playhouse performances. Anne loves singing and is part of Harmony Choir and Asmarina Voices at Leeds Playhouse.
Ari Honarvar is the founder of Rumi With A View, dedicated to building music and poetry bridges across war-torn and conflict-ridden borders. She conducts Resilience through Joy workshops for refugees and volunteers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Her novel, A Girl Called Rumi (September 2021) weaves a tale of immigration, redemption, and the power of storytelling and is based on Ari's experience growing up in the Iran-Iraq war. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Teen Vogue, Washington Post, Vice, and elsewhere.
Aslanbek Dadaev is a Chechen journalist and director of the documentary film Dada (Father) about an elderly school teacher. He has been working in journalism since 1992 and collaborated with many well-known media outlets during both Chechen wars: Reuters, WTN, APTN, CNN, AFP, RFERL, and many Russian media outlets. From 2002 to the end of 2019, he was Radio free Europe / Radio Liberty’s own correspondent. He is the recipient of the prestigious 2005 David Burke International Board of Broadcasting Directors (BBG) Award. He lives in the UK since January 2020.
Aso is a writer from Iraq.
Audrey Ilwyn lives in the Spanish Basque Country with her partner and some extremely resilient house plants. When not writing, she spends her time studying languages and dance.
The child of Moroccan immigrants to France, an immigrant to the US himself, Benjamin Abtan dedicates his life to advancing social justice. His fiction work explores the intersection of systems of domination and human freedom, with a special place for underrepresented female voices, and was previously featured in The Massachusetts Review.
Burak Sahin has been living in the UK for nine years and is originally from Turkey. He works in an immigration law company. His family also moved to Switzerland approximately five years ago, so he has first-hand experience with the immigration process through himself, his family and his work. This is his first published written work.
Moscow-born Daria Kulesh had her first poetic publications in Russian literary magazines such as Arion and Novy Mir. Her passion for Celtic music and culture has led to many adventures on a turbulent and exciting journey through life. Today, she is a folk singer and singer-songwriter resident in the UK and inspired by her Russian and Ingush (North Caucasus) heritage.
David Blumenfeld (aka Dean Flowerfield) is professor emeritus of philosophy. He has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Illinois at Chicago; Southwestern University, where he held the McManis Chair in Philosophy and Religion; and Georgia State University, where he was philosophy chairperson and associate dean for the humanities. His 2021 publications are in Best New True Crime Stories: Well-Mannered Crooks, Rogues & Criminals; Mono.; Balloons Lit. Journal; The Caterpillar; Beyond Words and (forthcoming 2022) Carmina Magazine.
David Ishaya Osu is a Nigerian poet, memoirist and street photographer. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including: Magma Poetry, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Griffith Review, Australian Poetry Journal, among others. David has an MA in Creative Writing (with distinction) from the University of Kent.
After several decades as a law professor, Deborah Schmedemann now volunteers with new Americans, teaching adult English language learners and participating in her church’s refugee and immigration justice ministries. Her essays have been published in various anthologies. She lives in Minneapolis, Chicago, and a lake-side cabin in Wisconsin.
Dima Mekdad, PhD, is the co-founder of Qisetna: Talking Syria, a cultural organisation that centres storytelling as a tool for personal empowerment, social engagement and cultural heritage preservation for Syrians globally. Dima is a storyteller and writer interested in the human experience and is particularly curious about connection, belonging, healing and growth.
Ebele Mogo is fascinated by science, innovation, interiority, and philosophy. As a writer, she explores these curiosities through stories, essays, and poems. As a scientist, she explores them through research to inform innovation & investments for a healthy planetary future. Most recently her stories and poetry have been published in Snapdragon Journal, Jalada Africa, and Kikwetu Journal. Her stories have also been shortlisted for the Saraba Manuscript Prize (2016), and the Toyin Falola Prize (2020). She is on Twitter as @ebyral.
Faleeha Hassan is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, teacher, and editor. She is from Iraq and now lives in the United States as a refugee. The first woman to write poetry for children in Iraq, she earned her master’s degree in Arabic literature and has published 25 books. Her poems have been translated into 17 languages, and she’s received many awards in Iraq and throughout the Middle East for her poetry and short stories. Translations of her writing have appeared in The Guardian, The Galway Review, Words Without Borders, The Brooklyn Rail/InTranslation, Scarlet Leaf Review, and The American Poetry Review, amongst others. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 and won the Pushcart Prize and the Moonstone Chapbook Contest in 2019. She is the Winner of the Women of Excellence Inspiration Award from SJ magazine 2020 and Winner of Grand Jury Award of the Sahitto International Award for Literature 2021.
Dr Fatena al Shubaki is a Palestinian refugee in northern Iraq. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Mosul, College of Arts, Department of Arabic Language. She has a PhD in Modern Criticism from Baghdad University, and a master’s degree in Arabic literature from the University of Kufa. For 21 years she has taught literature and modern criticism at the University of Kofa and the University of Mosul.
Filippa N. Johansen mainly writes short fiction. She lives in London, UK, but frequently sets her stories among the beech trees of her native Denmark. Her work has previously appeared in an anthology by small leaf press and been long-listed for the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize.
Foday Mannah hails from Sierra Leone where he studied English Language and Literature at Fourah Bay College. On graduation, he worked as a teacher and lecturer before migrating to the United Kingdom. Foday currently lives in Scotland where he is employed as a teacher of English. He holds an MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation from the University of Stirling and an MA with Distinction in Professional Writing from Falmouth University. Foday’s writing seeks to represent the experiences of some of the truly remarkable people he has encountered in life. Within this context, Foday’s especially seeks to explore and highlight the disproportionate use of power both domestic and political. His short story Amie Samba was shortlisted for the 2019 Bristol Short Story Prize, and was published in the anthology of the same year. Foday has also had pieces shortlisted and or longlisted / highly commended for the Commonwealth, Bridport, Sean O’Faolain, Mo Siewcharran and Brick Lane writing competitions. His short stories Yellow Woman and In the Land of Queen Elizabeth’s Head have also been published in Doek Literary Magazine and The Decolonial Passage Magazine respectively.
Francesco Capussela is an Italian author born in 1996. His writing is published or forthcoming in SURVIVAL – Award-Winning Poetry by Hammond House Publishing, The RavensPerch, Wingless Dreamer and others. Francesco is also a multi award-winning screenwriter and lives between the US and Italy. – IG: @francescocapu
Gabriela Halas immigrated to Canada during the early 1980s, grew up in northern Alberta, lived in Alaska for seven years, and currently resides in B.C., Canada. She has published poetry in a variety of literary journals including About Place Journal, Prairie Fire, december magazine, Rock & Sling, The Louisville Review, and The Hopper; fiction in subTerrain, Broken Pencil, and The Hopper; nonfiction in untethered magazine, Grain, Pilgrimage, High Country News, and forthcoming in The Whitefish Review. She has received two Best of the Net nominations in poetry (2020). She lives and writes on traditional Ktunaxa Nation land. www.gabrielahalas.org
Originally from China, H. T. Brickner resides in America’s upper midwest with her husband, calling Minnesota her home. When she is not working on her engineering day job, she does a few things to stay active and live vicariously through the stories she reads and writes.
Ilya Gutner lives with his friend, a variable set of cats, the village dogs who come scraping at the door and the rain that comes knocking at the window, in a farmer’s backshed in a village on the disappearing outskirts of Shanghai, and is a student of philosophy.
Ioanna Akoumianaki was born and raised in a blue-collar neighborhood in downtown Athens, Greece. She has travelled a lot as a marine biologist and has gathered many stories exposing the evils in society and the environment. She has published one such story in Greek. Ioanna lives in Scotland working on water sustainability.
Jade Jackson was born in East Africa, studied journalism and worked as a sports reporter. After members of her family were killed and her own life was threatened, Jade was forced to flee and arrived in the UK in 2001. Jade works as a volunteer at the Refugee Council. She published her first collection of poetry, Moving A Country, in 2013, and regularly recites her work in the UK.
Jaric Sarmiento is an immigrant from the Philippines currently residing in Southern California. He graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in literature and mainly focuses on writing experimental explorations of depression, the absurd, and LGBTQ issues. He also likes card games.
Jeanette Cathy Jones is originally from Zimbabwe and now lives in a lovely town called Halifax. She is a Charity and Covid19 Volunteer, and has a passion for writing that touches people’s lives and heals souls. Her poetry focuses on love, pain, life memories, and hope. Poetry is indeed food to her soul.
Jessica Nero has degrees in English Literature but has spent the last few decades creating grassroots journalism and blockading arms factories. She is an immigrant living in the UK and is currently experimenting her way back to writing creatively. She occasionally tweets @Yetthewindblew
Joanna Sit was born in China and grew up in New York City, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She studied poetry with Allen Ginsberg and Susan Fromberg Schaeffer at Brooklyn College and now teaches Creative Writing at Medgar Evers College, City University of New York. She is the author of My Last Century (2012), In Thailand with the Apostles (2014), and Track Works (2017). Her poem ‘Timescape: The Age of Oz’ was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2016. In addition to her memoir East to East, she is working on an ethnographic narrative called The Reincarnation of Red and another book of poems called Fantastic Voyage.
Joe Bedford is a writer from Doncaster, UK. His short stories have been published widely, and are available alongside his interview series Writers on Research via joebedford.co.uk
Jorge Saralegui was born in Cuba and reached the United States as a refugee at the age of seven. He graduated from Antioch College with a degree in creative writing. His stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, the Santa Monica Review, and Porcupine, and a fourth is forthcoming in an anthology called Latinos in Lotusland. Jorge now lives in Los Angeles, and works on a novel.
K. Eltinaé is a Sudanese poet of Nubian descent. His work has been translated into Arabic, Greek, Farsi, French and Spanish. His work has appeared in The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human: Many Muslim Worlds (Penguin) and The African American Review, among others. He is the winner of The 2019 Beverly Prize for International Literature (Eyewear Publishing) and co-winner of the 2019 Dignity Not Detention Prize (Poetry International).
Kathy Mairs is an Irish immigrant living in England. A Registered Nurse and Social Sciences graduate, she has worked in the NHS, charity sector, and third level education. She believes that equality is only achievable when social justice replaces self-interest as the driving force in our society. Kathy now has time to write and had an article published in Cumbria magazine.
Lazarus Trubman is a college professor from the former USSR who immigrated to the United States in 1990 after surviving four years as a political prisoner in a strict-regime colony. Assigned to a university in Arizona, he taught Literary Theory and Romance languages until his retirement in 2017.
Leela Floyd was born in Singapore of Indian parents. In 1958, she and her family successfully completed an epic journey by car from the tip of Southern India to the UK. She attended a local grammar, Clapham County School, where she was the first and only Indian girl. Unexpected family circumstances during her mid teens meant that she was looked after by two English families. At seventeen, she attended the Royal Academy of Music to study the piano. After teaching for a few years, she won a Leverhulme scholarship to do research on music in inner city multi cultural schools. Since then, she has worked as a journalist, researcher for television and wrote the very first book on Indian Music for schools. Recently, she completed her autobiography which she hopes to get published. She lives in London, is married and has three sons.
Lester Gómez Medina was born in Nicaragua, raised in Costa Rica and settled in London since 2014. In 2018, he was awarded with the Third Prize in the Bart Wolffe poetry competition, organised by Exiled Writers Ink. In 2021, Lester published his first pamphlet, The Riddle of The Cashew.
Loraine Masiya Mponela is a community organiser and migrants rights campaigner based in England. She is the current chairperson for Coventry asylum and refugee action group (CARAG), a peer-led self-organised community group. She is originally from Malawi. Loraine has a lovely son, Comfort.
Luis Elvira-Sierra is a painter and writer born in Spain where he achieved a BA in Philosophy in 2003. He lives in SE London since 2008. As a writer, he writes mainly poetry and short stories both in English and Spanish. He also organizes poetry events in London and Spain. Instagram: @luis_elvira_s
A Literature Major and a linguaphile, Mahima Kaur considers herself as an aesthete whose narratives and works are shaped by her experiences in different roles and places across borders and boundaries. She refuses to conform herself to one discourse and let her Sisyphean process of learning and un-learning flow in her writings. Her works are loud and clear and speak for themselves in a world where her voice is silenced time and again owing to her gender.
Majid Adin studied fine art and animation in Iran and was arrested there because of the political nature of his work. He fled his country and first met Good Chance in the Calais jungle camp in 2015. He came over to the UK in 2016, and since he attained the right to work, he has worked as an artist in London. Through collaboration with the Good Chance Ensemble, Majid won a competition to create the official music video for Elton John’s Rocket Man that has been viewed by over 100 million people worldwide. Majid is working on his first graphic novel, Hamid and Shakespeare, to be published in April 2021, and is a Trustee of Good Chance. Majid is part of the Change the Word poetry collective with Good Chance, and his poems have been published in their anthology, An Orchestra of Unexpected Sounds.
Mandy Shunnarah is a writer who calls Columbus, Ohio, USA home. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Entropy Magazine, The Normal School, Heavy Feather Review, and others. Their first book, Midwest Shreds, will be out in 2022. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com
Mar Nwe Aye is an Oxfordshire-based Myanmar poet. Her poems and essays have previously been published in Myanmar; this is her first English publication. A forest school teacher by profession, her schools were forced to close when the military staged a coup in February. She hopes one day to return and aid the recovery process of the future Federal Democratic Myanmar.
Martina Petkova is a Bulgarian writer with a lifelong passion for equality and social justice. She’s worked on projects for refugee inclusion, non-formal education of children living in poverty and in institutions, and women with disabilities. In her writing, Martina explores the topics of racism, scapegoating, and mental health.
Maryna Krazhova is a Belarusian-born author from Boston, U.S. The majority of her poetry and short stories are written in her native language. As an AmeriCorps member, she serves refugees and immigrants at Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and is interested in diversity, cultural issues, and the rights of ethnic minorities.
Masimba Musodza was born in Zimbabwe, and has lived most of his adult life in the United Kingdom. His short stories, mostly in the speculative fiction genre, have appeared in periodicals and anthologies around the world. He has written two novels and a novella in his first language, ChiShona. His collection of science-fiction stories, The Junkyard Rastaman & Other Stories, was published in 2020. Masimba also writes for stage and screen. He lives in Middlesbrough, North East England.
Matias Travieso-Diaz was born in Cuba and migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. He retired and turned his attention to creative writing. His stories have been published or accepted for publication or use in over fifty paying short story anthologies, magazines, audio books and podcasts, most recently the Grantville Gazette, After Dinner Conversation, Red Room Press (Year’s Best Hardcore Horror vol.6), and The Copperfield Review. Some of his stories have also received ‘honorable mentions’ from a number of publications.
Matt Schroeder is a poet and educator based in southern China. His poetry can be found in Thin Air Magazine, New World Writing, Welter Magazine, and forthcoming from Poet Lore & Invisible City Lit.
Mehdi Hamisi is a Syrian refugee who now lives in Turkey. Mehdi was born in Damascus, likes theatre, reading books, poetry, and making people happy.
Meng Qiu loves writing as well as painting and clay modelling. Her poetry often tells stories from artistic perspectives, where she explores inner feelings especially of individuals in a certain situation related to childhood scenes. She believes art can help us cope with stress and improve individual and community wellbeing.
Miodrag Kojadinović is a dual citizen of tridenominational and quadriethnic origin who’s lived in five countries and taught at six universities. His writing has appeared in not just seven but 13 languages, though, in two dozen countries. He’s looking for marriage incl. of convenience to a Portuguese of either sex.
Mohammed Ash (he/him) is a writer & artist, born and raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1997. He’s interested in animation, music, politics and makeup. Mohammed studied Psychology in King Abdulaziz University for four years but due to his sexuality he couldn’t finish his education and became a refugee at 22. He’s been in the UK for two years and wants to become a mental health nurse in the near future.
mona rae immigrated from the us to the uk to live with her british spouse. she is descended from generations of european and asian immigrants, including her mother, who moved to the united states from the philippines; her father, who moved to the philippines from the united states; her paternal grandparents, who moved to the united states from czechoslovakia and poland; and her maternal great-grandparents, who moved to the philippines from spain and china.
Born in Mauritius, Moossa Casseem immigrated to England in 1967, aged 18 years, when he was recruited to work in the NHS. He enjoys kite flying, gardening, walking, and trying his hand at writing poems and short stories.
Mwaffaq Alhajjar is a Syrian poet, engineer and educator. He published his first collection of poetry, Poetic Entropy, in 2019 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, via Gerakbudaya. Mwaffaq now is doing his masters in comparative literature and is interested in the Untranslatabilities in Literature.
N.A. is a writer and visual artist based in the UK. Her background is Somali/Dutch and her work focuses on identity, faith and human rights. If you ever want to see her smile just give her a cup of tea.
N.B. is about to finish a Creative Writing MA at a university in London. She writes mostly non-fiction and poetry. At the moment she is working on her debut novel.
Nashwa Nasreldin is a writer, freelance editor and translator of Arabic literature. She is the translator of the collaborative novel, Shatila Stories, and co-translator of Samar Yazbek's memoir, The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria. She is a contributing editor of ArabLit Quarterly, a journal of Arabic literature in translation.
Nick Mulgrew was born in Durban in 1990, and lives in Edinburgh. He is the author of four books, the latest of which is a novel, A Hibiscus Coast. A Mandela Rhodes Scholar and recipient of the 2018 Nadine Gordimer Award, he is currently studying toward a PhD in Writing Practice at the University of Dundee, and as well as directing uHlanga, a multi-award-winning poetry press based in South Africa.
Author Nick Padron resides in Madrid, Spain. His stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies internationally. His fiction collection, Souls in Exile, is available at booksellers everywhere. He is the author of three novels, The Cuban Scar, The Exhumation, and Where Labyrinths End, scheduled for publication in 2021.
The Oasis Women’s Group at Maryhill Integration Network meet monthly to share stories and poems and use them as inspiration to create their own group poems. During Covid they’ve been meeting online but are looking forward to resuming their in -person group soon.
Born in Angola, and raised in Portugal, paulo da costa is a writer, editor and translator living in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. He is the recipient of the 2020 James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction, the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region, the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Canongate Prize for short-fiction. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been published widely in literary magazines around the world and translated into Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese. The Midwife of Torment is his latest book of fiction.
Pitambar Naik is an advertising professional for a living. He’s a Poetry Editor for Minute Magazine. His work appears or forthcoming in Marble Poetry, Another Chicago Magazine, Packingtown Review, Mason Street Review, Rigorous, New Contrast, Ghost City Review, Glass Poetry, Cha Journal, The Indian Quarterly, Vayavya, Liquid Imagination and The World Belongs To Us HarperCollins India among others. The Anatomy of Solitude (Hawakal) is his debut book of poetry. He grew up in India.
Dr Rasha Roshdy was born in Cairo and immigrated to the United States in 1996. She founded Amna Sanctuary in 2020 to help immigrants and refugees thrive in America. She’s published dozens of fiction and non-fiction stories, and is known to many as ‘Cosmic Mother’. Roshdy now lives in California.
Rebecca Ruth Gould is the author of, most recently, the poetry collection Beautiful English (2021) and the nonfictional work The Persian Prison Poem (2021). She has translated many books from Persian and Georgian. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she was awarded the Creative Writing New Zealand Flash Fiction prize in 2019.
Ronita Sinha lives in Toronto, Canada. She is a traveler, recipe experimenter, and gardener, tilling her soul for words, images and then she cannot help it. Her work has been published or forthcoming in Sixfold, East of the Web, The Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Magic Diary, Lemonspouting and The Literary Yard. In August 2020 she was awarded ‘Storyteller of the Month’ by The Magic Diary. Ronita is a Fiction reader for Atticus Review. She writes her personal stories on her blog https://knowingheartblog.wordpress.com/. She holds an M. Phil degree in English Literature from the University of Jadavpur, Calcutta, India. She emigrated to Canada from India in 1999 with her husband and two children.
Saanjana Kapoor is a Bachelor of Arts student at the University of Melbourne. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Voiceworks, Underground Writers, Island, Paper Lanterns, Cordite Poetry Review, and more. She is an artist for the 2021 National Young Writers’ Festival.
Saba Karim Khan is an author, award-winning filmmaker and educator, whose writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Wasafiri, Huff Post, Verso, Think Progress, DAWN, etc. Her debut novel, Skyfall, was recently released by Bloomsbury and her documentary film, Concrete Dreams: Some Roads Lead Home, produced by the Doha Film Institute (DFI), has been officially selected and won awards at global film festivals in Paris, Berlin, Toronto, USA and India. She has read Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and works at NYU Abu Dhabi. Before joining the Academy, she worked as Country Marketing and Public Affairs Head at Citigroup. Born in Karachi, she now lives in Abu Dhabi with her husband and two daughters. Saba can be contacted at sabakarimkhan.com and via Twitter @SabaKarim.
Sabir Zazai is a former refugee from Afghanistan who now leads the Scottish Refugee Council. Sabir’s early education was interrupted by the war in Afghanistan, when he was internally displaced with his family when he was still at primary education. However, his resilience, hope and a strong desire for education helped him to graduate from Coventry University with a degree in Human Resources Management, and a Masters in Community Cohesion Management. Recently he was conferred with a Honorary Doctorate at the University of Glasgow for services to community, and received the Lord Provost award for human rights. Sabir is now Honorary President of City of Sanctuary and a Visiting Practice Fellow at the Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University.
Saliha Haddad is a junior literary agent at Worlds Arts Agency. She graduated in the field of Anglophone Literature and Civilization in 2015. She is a literary interviewer for the online magazine Africa in Dialogue. Her debut creative nonfiction piece has appeared in the African magazine Agbowo. Haddad is the Fiction Co-editor of the South African based literary journal, Hotazel Review.
Sanmeet Kaur is a freelance writer and has written for a number of publications including gal-dem, Metro, i newspaper, Media Diversified and Oh Mag. She lives in London and can be found on Twitter at @sanmeeet.
Sara Cook is a cellist studying on the MA Chamber Music Course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is also an Alexander Technique and cello teacher. As a teacher, she instils curiosity, thoughtfulness, and kindness into her students. In her free time, she enjoys hiking in the mountains of Scotland.
Shukria Rezaei is a Hazara from Afghanistan. She has been living in the UK since 2011, from the age of 14. She studied for her GCSEs and A-Levels in the UK during which she began her writing journey as well. Her poems primarily focus on her refugee journey and the plight of her Hazara people. She has been featured on BBC Radio and Channel Four and published in various other anthologies and online media. She has just completed her masters degree in human rights and politics and wishes to go into the field of NGOs and Humanitarian organisations.
Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a writer from the Greater Toronto Area, Canada. She is the recipient of the inagural Vijay Nambisan Fellowship 2019 and the recipient of The Robert Hayden Scholarship 2021. She was the Charles Wallace Fellow writer-in-residence (2019-20) at The University of Stirling. She is the author of the chapbook Ghost Tracks (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020) and the founding editor of Parentheses Journal. Website: www.snehasubramaniankanta.com
Sonia Lambert is a writer, journalist and teacher. Her novel Three Mothers was published by Piatkus (Little, Brown) in 2008, and she has written for BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and has recently completed a PhD on the subject of refugees to Britain during WW2 at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also a volunteer at the Refugee Council. Contact: soniamlambert@hotmail.com
Sophie Buchaillard is a Franco-British author who has been living in the UK for twenty years. She writes on the theme of identity and belonging and is currently a PhD candidate looking at migrant literature in a francophone postcolonial context. She has been published in Wales Arts Review and Murmurations Magazine. Square Wheel Press included two of her pieces in their anthology Together and Apart (2020). Her debut novel This Is Not Who We Are (Seren Books) is out in June 2022. Twitter: @growriter Website: www.sophiebuchaillard.com
Stefania Hartley was born and grew up in Palermo, Sicily. She left her sunny island after falling head over heels in love with an Englishman, and now lives in the UK. Having finally learnt English, she now enjoys writing romance and short stories. Find out more on her website: http://www.stefaniahartley.com/
Tara Goldsmith left the country of her birth and much later went back to the third version of the same country. In between, she has travelled the world, exploring not only the cultures of other countries but also her own identity and inner conflicts about family, tradition, loss and the struggle to create a meaningful future. She is now settled in the English countryside with her dogs and books.
Mr Tilden is a black American writer living in Barcelona, Spain.
Timea Sipos is a Hungarian-American writer, translator, written- and spoken-word poet with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her writing appears in Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Juked, and elsewhere. A 2021-2022 Steinbeck Fellow, she has received support from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, and elsewhere.
Tineke Van der Eecken is a well-travelled Flemish-Australian who writes about place as it is affected by colonial history and about climate change. She examines the struggles of human connection within this context, and explores this further through visual art in Tributaries, an exhibition this Nov-Dec 2021. readtraverse.com Facebook: TinekeVanderEeckenAuthor
Usman Mahar is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Munich (LMU). Since 2019 he has been conducting – a German Research Foundation (DFG) funded – research that aims to understand the affective dimensions of deportation and ‘voluntary’ return migration to Pakistan. His alma maters include the University of Heidelberg, University College Utrecht and Aitchison College Lahore.
Victor Pogostin was born in Moscow. He graduated from The School of Translators of the Moscow State Institute for Foreign Languages, worked as translator for the Soviet Trade Mission in India, taught Russian Language and Culture course at the Aligarh Muslim University, served in the Long Range Naval Reconnaissance Aviation of the Northern Fleet. After his return from military service, he defended his PhD dissertation on Ernest Hemingway’s Nonfiction. For many years he worked in the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, while working as a freelance author/translator for national newspapers and literary magazines throughout the former Soviet Union. In addition to translating fiction and nonfiction into Russian, he has compiled, edited, and written introductions and commentaries for over a dozen books by North American authors, including the works of Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. In 1993 he relocated to Canada with his wife and son. His non-fiction has appeared in The National Post (Canada), Canadian Literature magazine, Russian Life magazine (Vermont), The Epoch Times (US & Canada editions), and As You Were: the journal of Military Experience and the Arts (US).
Victoria Chvatal was born in the USSR; emigrated to Australia as a teenager; and emigrated to Israel while in her 40s. She currently lives in Jerusalem with her family.
Vishwas Gaitonde spent his formative years in India, has lived in Britain and now resides in the United States. He has been published in Mid-American Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Iowa Review, Santa Monica Review, Epiphany, and elsewhere. He was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition of the Nottingham Writers’ Studio, England, and his story appears in their anthology, Black Lives. He is on Twitter at @weareji
Votey Cheav is a Cambodian-American daughter of refugees who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide. She was born in a refugee camp and returned to Cambodia to witness its rebirth and resurgence of identity amidst changing geopolitical alliances. She is a trained lawyer and interested in the collective consciousness – the moments and memories that evoke awakening in each of us. Votey is now based in London.
XU XI 許素細 is Indonesian-Chinese from Hong Kong and author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction. A diehard transnational, she co-founded Authors at Large and currently occupies the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Yakin Ajay Kinger is currently a student of the Master’s in Architectural History and Theory program at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. He works on theorising architecture and material culture. His current research focuses on decoding the amnesia and resurgence of a medieval garden in India. His work has been published across various platforms.
Yessica Klein is a Brazilian-born writer based in Berlin, Germany. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Kingston University (UK) and her writing has been featured on 3:AM, The Moth, Magnum Photos, The Lighthouse Review, and more. She was also shortlisted for the 2017 Jane Martin Poetry Prize.
Poetry is Yordanos Gebrehiwot’s way of exploring herself and sharing her experience with the world. Yordanos’s experience as a writer around poetry ignited two years ago when she met Good Chance Theatre and was given an opportunity to instigate her deeply hidden talent. She previously wrote a few poems in her mother tongue Amharic.
Yuan Changming started to learn the English alphabet at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include eleven Pushcart nominations, eleven chapbooks (most recently Limerence) as well as appearances in the Best of Best Canadian Poetry & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1879 others worldwide. Furthermore, Yuan served on the jury for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards (poetry category).
Yulia Tseytlin is a Russian-Israeli that currently resides in Germany. Since submitting her Doctoral dissertation in Economics, she pursues her childhood dream of becoming a fiction writer. Her work explores the genres of literary fiction and contemporary fiction, blending in her personal experiences as a woman, a mother, and an immigrant.
Zohra Mousavi was born in exile to refugee parents. She has studied politics for over seven years only to realise that her passion lies elsewhere: writing. She has founded Wander Kammer Museum – a digital museum that collects and displays refugee stories of (im)mobility and homemaking across the globe. Zohra stays in Berlin with her sister and two nephews, enjoys coffee and the rain.
Zouhour Alkhaled is a Syrian National who arrived in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in Spring 2020. She loves writing because it expresses feelings that the tongue cannot say. When humans cannot change the reality, the pen can. It passes with its lines many eyes, opinions, and ears, it enlightens all that is dark. Zouhour believes that the pen is the only flame capable of lighting light for generations to come. It relieves the soul of feelings and expresses the content of the mind and what it is about.
Ako Karim Ismail is from the Kurdistan Region in North Iraq. He is a journalist and has worked as a reporter and news editor for TV and newspapers in Kurdistan. He arrived in the UK in 2015 and now has asylum seeker status. During the last two years, he has been developing real experiences into written works about love, loss and safety, and hopes to write a book about his journey, family, and his explorations of humanity.
Alex Hales is an occasionally amiable 47-year-old author of one screenplay, Unhappy Together, and five short volumes on matters such as music, verse, and nightlife. The most recent of these, Stagehands In The Night, was an affectionately-scurillous trawl through the ne’er-do-wells of his hometown that would benefit your spare time greatly.
Allan Lake, originally from Saskatchewan, has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton, Ibiza, Tasmania & Melbourne. Poetry collection: Sand in the Sole (Xlibris, 2014). Lake won Lost Tower Publications (UK) Comp 2017, Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Fest 2018 and publication in NewPhilosopher 2020. Latest chapbook (Ginninderra Press 2020) My Photos of Sicily.
Amir Darwish is a British Syrian poet & writer of Kurdish origin who lives in London. Born in Aleppo, he came to Britain as an asylum seeker in 2003. He has a BA in History from Teesside University, UK, an MA in International Relations of the Middle East from Durham University, UK, and an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths University, UK. As a poet, he published his work in the UK, USA, Pakistan, India, Finland, Turkey, Canada, Singapore & Mexico. His work translated into Arabic, Bengali, Estonian, Finnish, Italian, Spanish and Turkish, amongst other languages. Twitter: @darwish_amir
Once a child refugee, Ana Fores-Tamayo advocates for marginalized refugee families from Mexico and Central America. Working with asylum seekers is heart-wrenching, so poetry is her escape. She has published in The Raving Press, Laurel Review, Indolent Books and many other anthologies and journals, online and in-print. Her poetry in translation & photography have been featured at home and internationally. Through poetry, she keeps tilting at windmills.
Dr Anastasia Christou is Associate Professor of Sociology at Middlesex University, London, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Anastasia is a long-term committed academic activist, trade unionist, feminist and anti-racist. As an interdisciplinary critical scholar, Anastasia’s research and poetry transcend geographies and cultures in meaningfully seeking social justice.
Andrew J. Calis is an Arab-American poet, teacher, and husband, and an overjoyed father of four. His first book of poetry, Pilgrimages (Wipf & Stock, 2020), was praised by James Matthew Wilson for having ‘the intensity of Hopkins’ and for ‘layer[ing] light on light in hopes of helping us to see.’ His work has appeared in America, Dappled Things, Presence, Convivium and elsewhere, and he teaches at Archbishop Spalding High School in Maryland.
Angela Zaher is a Lebanese-British freelance food and fiction writer. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon but has lived in Brussels and in Hong Kong making her home in London for over 20 years. Her two passions are food and writing and she has been dedicated to both since leaving the legal profession. Follow her weekly blog on Instagram: @angela_zaher
Anne Collins is a performer, writer and all-round creative person who is based in Leeds. She volunteers for Refugee Council on HARP, Women’s Health Matters at Rainbow Heart, and is part of ‘Lift the Ban’ campaign. She is Mafwa Theatre member since 2018 and this year became Mafwa Theatre Associate Artist to develop artistic skills. Anne regularly attends Theatre of Sanctuary workshops at Leeds Playhouse. She loves art, music, operas and playhouse performances. Anne loves singing and is part of Harmony Choir and Asmarina Voices at Leeds Playhouse.
Ari Honarvar is the founder of Rumi With A View, dedicated to building music and poetry bridges across war-torn and conflict-ridden borders. She conducts Resilience through Joy workshops for refugees and volunteers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Her novel, A Girl Called Rumi (September 2021) weaves a tale of immigration, redemption, and the power of storytelling and is based on Ari's experience growing up in the Iran-Iraq war. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Teen Vogue, Washington Post, Vice, and elsewhere.
Aslanbek Dadaev is a Chechen journalist and director of the documentary film Dada (Father) about an elderly school teacher. He has been working in journalism since 1992 and collaborated with many well-known media outlets during both Chechen wars: Reuters, WTN, APTN, CNN, AFP, RFERL, and many Russian media outlets. From 2002 to the end of 2019, he was Radio free Europe / Radio Liberty’s own correspondent. He is the recipient of the prestigious 2005 David Burke International Board of Broadcasting Directors (BBG) Award. He lives in the UK since January 2020.
Aso is a writer from Iraq.
Audrey Ilwyn lives in the Spanish Basque Country with her partner and some extremely resilient house plants. When not writing, she spends her time studying languages and dance.
The child of Moroccan immigrants to France, an immigrant to the US himself, Benjamin Abtan dedicates his life to advancing social justice. His fiction work explores the intersection of systems of domination and human freedom, with a special place for underrepresented female voices, and was previously featured in The Massachusetts Review.
Burak Sahin has been living in the UK for nine years and is originally from Turkey. He works in an immigration law company. His family also moved to Switzerland approximately five years ago, so he has first-hand experience with the immigration process through himself, his family and his work. This is his first published written work.
Moscow-born Daria Kulesh had her first poetic publications in Russian literary magazines such as Arion and Novy Mir. Her passion for Celtic music and culture has led to many adventures on a turbulent and exciting journey through life. Today, she is a folk singer and singer-songwriter resident in the UK and inspired by her Russian and Ingush (North Caucasus) heritage.
David Blumenfeld (aka Dean Flowerfield) is professor emeritus of philosophy. He has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Illinois at Chicago; Southwestern University, where he held the McManis Chair in Philosophy and Religion; and Georgia State University, where he was philosophy chairperson and associate dean for the humanities. His 2021 publications are in Best New True Crime Stories: Well-Mannered Crooks, Rogues & Criminals; Mono.; Balloons Lit. Journal; The Caterpillar; Beyond Words and (forthcoming 2022) Carmina Magazine.
David Ishaya Osu is a Nigerian poet, memoirist and street photographer. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including: Magma Poetry, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Griffith Review, Australian Poetry Journal, among others. David has an MA in Creative Writing (with distinction) from the University of Kent.
After several decades as a law professor, Deborah Schmedemann now volunteers with new Americans, teaching adult English language learners and participating in her church’s refugee and immigration justice ministries. Her essays have been published in various anthologies. She lives in Minneapolis, Chicago, and a lake-side cabin in Wisconsin.
Dima Mekdad, PhD, is the co-founder of Qisetna: Talking Syria, a cultural organisation that centres storytelling as a tool for personal empowerment, social engagement and cultural heritage preservation for Syrians globally. Dima is a storyteller and writer interested in the human experience and is particularly curious about connection, belonging, healing and growth.
Ebele Mogo is fascinated by science, innovation, interiority, and philosophy. As a writer, she explores these curiosities through stories, essays, and poems. As a scientist, she explores them through research to inform innovation & investments for a healthy planetary future. Most recently her stories and poetry have been published in Snapdragon Journal, Jalada Africa, and Kikwetu Journal. Her stories have also been shortlisted for the Saraba Manuscript Prize (2016), and the Toyin Falola Prize (2020). She is on Twitter as @ebyral.
Faleeha Hassan is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, teacher, and editor. She is from Iraq and now lives in the United States as a refugee. The first woman to write poetry for children in Iraq, she earned her master’s degree in Arabic literature and has published 25 books. Her poems have been translated into 17 languages, and she’s received many awards in Iraq and throughout the Middle East for her poetry and short stories. Translations of her writing have appeared in The Guardian, The Galway Review, Words Without Borders, The Brooklyn Rail/InTranslation, Scarlet Leaf Review, and The American Poetry Review, amongst others. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 and won the Pushcart Prize and the Moonstone Chapbook Contest in 2019. She is the Winner of the Women of Excellence Inspiration Award from SJ magazine 2020 and Winner of Grand Jury Award of the Sahitto International Award for Literature 2021.
Dr Fatena al Shubaki is a Palestinian refugee in northern Iraq. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Mosul, College of Arts, Department of Arabic Language. She has a PhD in Modern Criticism from Baghdad University, and a master’s degree in Arabic literature from the University of Kufa. For 21 years she has taught literature and modern criticism at the University of Kofa and the University of Mosul.
Filippa N. Johansen mainly writes short fiction. She lives in London, UK, but frequently sets her stories among the beech trees of her native Denmark. Her work has previously appeared in an anthology by small leaf press and been long-listed for the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize.
Foday Mannah hails from Sierra Leone where he studied English Language and Literature at Fourah Bay College. On graduation, he worked as a teacher and lecturer before migrating to the United Kingdom. Foday currently lives in Scotland where he is employed as a teacher of English. He holds an MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation from the University of Stirling and an MA with Distinction in Professional Writing from Falmouth University. Foday’s writing seeks to represent the experiences of some of the truly remarkable people he has encountered in life. Within this context, Foday’s especially seeks to explore and highlight the disproportionate use of power both domestic and political. His short story Amie Samba was shortlisted for the 2019 Bristol Short Story Prize, and was published in the anthology of the same year. Foday has also had pieces shortlisted and or longlisted / highly commended for the Commonwealth, Bridport, Sean O’Faolain, Mo Siewcharran and Brick Lane writing competitions. His short stories Yellow Woman and In the Land of Queen Elizabeth’s Head have also been published in Doek Literary Magazine and The Decolonial Passage Magazine respectively.
Francesco Capussela is an Italian author born in 1996. His writing is published or forthcoming in SURVIVAL – Award-Winning Poetry by Hammond House Publishing, The RavensPerch, Wingless Dreamer and others. Francesco is also a multi award-winning screenwriter and lives between the US and Italy. – IG: @francescocapu
Gabriela Halas immigrated to Canada during the early 1980s, grew up in northern Alberta, lived in Alaska for seven years, and currently resides in B.C., Canada. She has published poetry in a variety of literary journals including About Place Journal, Prairie Fire, december magazine, Rock & Sling, The Louisville Review, and The Hopper; fiction in subTerrain, Broken Pencil, and The Hopper; nonfiction in untethered magazine, Grain, Pilgrimage, High Country News, and forthcoming in The Whitefish Review. She has received two Best of the Net nominations in poetry (2020). She lives and writes on traditional Ktunaxa Nation land. www.gabrielahalas.org
Originally from China, H. T. Brickner resides in America’s upper midwest with her husband, calling Minnesota her home. When she is not working on her engineering day job, she does a few things to stay active and live vicariously through the stories she reads and writes.
Ilya Gutner lives with his friend, a variable set of cats, the village dogs who come scraping at the door and the rain that comes knocking at the window, in a farmer’s backshed in a village on the disappearing outskirts of Shanghai, and is a student of philosophy.
Ioanna Akoumianaki was born and raised in a blue-collar neighborhood in downtown Athens, Greece. She has travelled a lot as a marine biologist and has gathered many stories exposing the evils in society and the environment. She has published one such story in Greek. Ioanna lives in Scotland working on water sustainability.
Jade Jackson was born in East Africa, studied journalism and worked as a sports reporter. After members of her family were killed and her own life was threatened, Jade was forced to flee and arrived in the UK in 2001. Jade works as a volunteer at the Refugee Council. She published her first collection of poetry, Moving A Country, in 2013, and regularly recites her work in the UK.
Jaric Sarmiento is an immigrant from the Philippines currently residing in Southern California. He graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in literature and mainly focuses on writing experimental explorations of depression, the absurd, and LGBTQ issues. He also likes card games.
Jeanette Cathy Jones is originally from Zimbabwe and now lives in a lovely town called Halifax. She is a Charity and Covid19 Volunteer, and has a passion for writing that touches people’s lives and heals souls. Her poetry focuses on love, pain, life memories, and hope. Poetry is indeed food to her soul.
Jessica Nero has degrees in English Literature but has spent the last few decades creating grassroots journalism and blockading arms factories. She is an immigrant living in the UK and is currently experimenting her way back to writing creatively. She occasionally tweets @Yetthewindblew
Joanna Sit was born in China and grew up in New York City, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She studied poetry with Allen Ginsberg and Susan Fromberg Schaeffer at Brooklyn College and now teaches Creative Writing at Medgar Evers College, City University of New York. She is the author of My Last Century (2012), In Thailand with the Apostles (2014), and Track Works (2017). Her poem ‘Timescape: The Age of Oz’ was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2016. In addition to her memoir East to East, she is working on an ethnographic narrative called The Reincarnation of Red and another book of poems called Fantastic Voyage.
Joe Bedford is a writer from Doncaster, UK. His short stories have been published widely, and are available alongside his interview series Writers on Research via joebedford.co.uk
Jorge Saralegui was born in Cuba and reached the United States as a refugee at the age of seven. He graduated from Antioch College with a degree in creative writing. His stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, the Santa Monica Review, and Porcupine, and a fourth is forthcoming in an anthology called Latinos in Lotusland. Jorge now lives in Los Angeles, and works on a novel.
K. Eltinaé is a Sudanese poet of Nubian descent. His work has been translated into Arabic, Greek, Farsi, French and Spanish. His work has appeared in The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human: Many Muslim Worlds (Penguin) and The African American Review, among others. He is the winner of The 2019 Beverly Prize for International Literature (Eyewear Publishing) and co-winner of the 2019 Dignity Not Detention Prize (Poetry International).
Kathy Mairs is an Irish immigrant living in England. A Registered Nurse and Social Sciences graduate, she has worked in the NHS, charity sector, and third level education. She believes that equality is only achievable when social justice replaces self-interest as the driving force in our society. Kathy now has time to write and had an article published in Cumbria magazine.
Lazarus Trubman is a college professor from the former USSR who immigrated to the United States in 1990 after surviving four years as a political prisoner in a strict-regime colony. Assigned to a university in Arizona, he taught Literary Theory and Romance languages until his retirement in 2017.
Leela Floyd was born in Singapore of Indian parents. In 1958, she and her family successfully completed an epic journey by car from the tip of Southern India to the UK. She attended a local grammar, Clapham County School, where she was the first and only Indian girl. Unexpected family circumstances during her mid teens meant that she was looked after by two English families. At seventeen, she attended the Royal Academy of Music to study the piano. After teaching for a few years, she won a Leverhulme scholarship to do research on music in inner city multi cultural schools. Since then, she has worked as a journalist, researcher for television and wrote the very first book on Indian Music for schools. Recently, she completed her autobiography which she hopes to get published. She lives in London, is married and has three sons.
Lester Gómez Medina was born in Nicaragua, raised in Costa Rica and settled in London since 2014. In 2018, he was awarded with the Third Prize in the Bart Wolffe poetry competition, organised by Exiled Writers Ink. In 2021, Lester published his first pamphlet, The Riddle of The Cashew.
Loraine Masiya Mponela is a community organiser and migrants rights campaigner based in England. She is the current chairperson for Coventry asylum and refugee action group (CARAG), a peer-led self-organised community group. She is originally from Malawi. Loraine has a lovely son, Comfort.
Luis Elvira-Sierra is a painter and writer born in Spain where he achieved a BA in Philosophy in 2003. He lives in SE London since 2008. As a writer, he writes mainly poetry and short stories both in English and Spanish. He also organizes poetry events in London and Spain. Instagram: @luis_elvira_s
A Literature Major and a linguaphile, Mahima Kaur considers herself as an aesthete whose narratives and works are shaped by her experiences in different roles and places across borders and boundaries. She refuses to conform herself to one discourse and let her Sisyphean process of learning and un-learning flow in her writings. Her works are loud and clear and speak for themselves in a world where her voice is silenced time and again owing to her gender.
Majid Adin studied fine art and animation in Iran and was arrested there because of the political nature of his work. He fled his country and first met Good Chance in the Calais jungle camp in 2015. He came over to the UK in 2016, and since he attained the right to work, he has worked as an artist in London. Through collaboration with the Good Chance Ensemble, Majid won a competition to create the official music video for Elton John’s Rocket Man that has been viewed by over 100 million people worldwide. Majid is working on his first graphic novel, Hamid and Shakespeare, to be published in April 2021, and is a Trustee of Good Chance. Majid is part of the Change the Word poetry collective with Good Chance, and his poems have been published in their anthology, An Orchestra of Unexpected Sounds.
Mandy Shunnarah is a writer who calls Columbus, Ohio, USA home. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Entropy Magazine, The Normal School, Heavy Feather Review, and others. Their first book, Midwest Shreds, will be out in 2022. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com
Mar Nwe Aye is an Oxfordshire-based Myanmar poet. Her poems and essays have previously been published in Myanmar; this is her first English publication. A forest school teacher by profession, her schools were forced to close when the military staged a coup in February. She hopes one day to return and aid the recovery process of the future Federal Democratic Myanmar.
Martina Petkova is a Bulgarian writer with a lifelong passion for equality and social justice. She’s worked on projects for refugee inclusion, non-formal education of children living in poverty and in institutions, and women with disabilities. In her writing, Martina explores the topics of racism, scapegoating, and mental health.
Maryna Krazhova is a Belarusian-born author from Boston, U.S. The majority of her poetry and short stories are written in her native language. As an AmeriCorps member, she serves refugees and immigrants at Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and is interested in diversity, cultural issues, and the rights of ethnic minorities.
Masimba Musodza was born in Zimbabwe, and has lived most of his adult life in the United Kingdom. His short stories, mostly in the speculative fiction genre, have appeared in periodicals and anthologies around the world. He has written two novels and a novella in his first language, ChiShona. His collection of science-fiction stories, The Junkyard Rastaman & Other Stories, was published in 2020. Masimba also writes for stage and screen. He lives in Middlesbrough, North East England.
Matias Travieso-Diaz was born in Cuba and migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. He retired and turned his attention to creative writing. His stories have been published or accepted for publication or use in over fifty paying short story anthologies, magazines, audio books and podcasts, most recently the Grantville Gazette, After Dinner Conversation, Red Room Press (Year’s Best Hardcore Horror vol.6), and The Copperfield Review. Some of his stories have also received ‘honorable mentions’ from a number of publications.
Matt Schroeder is a poet and educator based in southern China. His poetry can be found in Thin Air Magazine, New World Writing, Welter Magazine, and forthcoming from Poet Lore & Invisible City Lit.
Mehdi Hamisi is a Syrian refugee who now lives in Turkey. Mehdi was born in Damascus, likes theatre, reading books, poetry, and making people happy.
Meng Qiu loves writing as well as painting and clay modelling. Her poetry often tells stories from artistic perspectives, where she explores inner feelings especially of individuals in a certain situation related to childhood scenes. She believes art can help us cope with stress and improve individual and community wellbeing.
Miodrag Kojadinović is a dual citizen of tridenominational and quadriethnic origin who’s lived in five countries and taught at six universities. His writing has appeared in not just seven but 13 languages, though, in two dozen countries. He’s looking for marriage incl. of convenience to a Portuguese of either sex.
Mohammed Ash (he/him) is a writer & artist, born and raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1997. He’s interested in animation, music, politics and makeup. Mohammed studied Psychology in King Abdulaziz University for four years but due to his sexuality he couldn’t finish his education and became a refugee at 22. He’s been in the UK for two years and wants to become a mental health nurse in the near future.
mona rae immigrated from the us to the uk to live with her british spouse. she is descended from generations of european and asian immigrants, including her mother, who moved to the united states from the philippines; her father, who moved to the philippines from the united states; her paternal grandparents, who moved to the united states from czechoslovakia and poland; and her maternal great-grandparents, who moved to the philippines from spain and china.
Born in Mauritius, Moossa Casseem immigrated to England in 1967, aged 18 years, when he was recruited to work in the NHS. He enjoys kite flying, gardening, walking, and trying his hand at writing poems and short stories.
Mwaffaq Alhajjar is a Syrian poet, engineer and educator. He published his first collection of poetry, Poetic Entropy, in 2019 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, via Gerakbudaya. Mwaffaq now is doing his masters in comparative literature and is interested in the Untranslatabilities in Literature.
N.A. is a writer and visual artist based in the UK. Her background is Somali/Dutch and her work focuses on identity, faith and human rights. If you ever want to see her smile just give her a cup of tea.
N.B. is about to finish a Creative Writing MA at a university in London. She writes mostly non-fiction and poetry. At the moment she is working on her debut novel.
Nashwa Nasreldin is a writer, freelance editor and translator of Arabic literature. She is the translator of the collaborative novel, Shatila Stories, and co-translator of Samar Yazbek's memoir, The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria. She is a contributing editor of ArabLit Quarterly, a journal of Arabic literature in translation.
Nick Mulgrew was born in Durban in 1990, and lives in Edinburgh. He is the author of four books, the latest of which is a novel, A Hibiscus Coast. A Mandela Rhodes Scholar and recipient of the 2018 Nadine Gordimer Award, he is currently studying toward a PhD in Writing Practice at the University of Dundee, and as well as directing uHlanga, a multi-award-winning poetry press based in South Africa.
Author Nick Padron resides in Madrid, Spain. His stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies internationally. His fiction collection, Souls in Exile, is available at booksellers everywhere. He is the author of three novels, The Cuban Scar, The Exhumation, and Where Labyrinths End, scheduled for publication in 2021.
The Oasis Women’s Group at Maryhill Integration Network meet monthly to share stories and poems and use them as inspiration to create their own group poems. During Covid they’ve been meeting online but are looking forward to resuming their in -person group soon.
Born in Angola, and raised in Portugal, paulo da costa is a writer, editor and translator living in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. He is the recipient of the 2020 James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction, the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region, the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Canongate Prize for short-fiction. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been published widely in literary magazines around the world and translated into Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese. The Midwife of Torment is his latest book of fiction.
Pitambar Naik is an advertising professional for a living. He’s a Poetry Editor for Minute Magazine. His work appears or forthcoming in Marble Poetry, Another Chicago Magazine, Packingtown Review, Mason Street Review, Rigorous, New Contrast, Ghost City Review, Glass Poetry, Cha Journal, The Indian Quarterly, Vayavya, Liquid Imagination and The World Belongs To Us HarperCollins India among others. The Anatomy of Solitude (Hawakal) is his debut book of poetry. He grew up in India.
Dr Rasha Roshdy was born in Cairo and immigrated to the United States in 1996. She founded Amna Sanctuary in 2020 to help immigrants and refugees thrive in America. She’s published dozens of fiction and non-fiction stories, and is known to many as ‘Cosmic Mother’. Roshdy now lives in California.
Rebecca Ruth Gould is the author of, most recently, the poetry collection Beautiful English (2021) and the nonfictional work The Persian Prison Poem (2021). She has translated many books from Persian and Georgian. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she was awarded the Creative Writing New Zealand Flash Fiction prize in 2019.
Ronita Sinha lives in Toronto, Canada. She is a traveler, recipe experimenter, and gardener, tilling her soul for words, images and then she cannot help it. Her work has been published or forthcoming in Sixfold, East of the Web, The Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Magic Diary, Lemonspouting and The Literary Yard. In August 2020 she was awarded ‘Storyteller of the Month’ by The Magic Diary. Ronita is a Fiction reader for Atticus Review. She writes her personal stories on her blog https://knowingheartblog.wordpress.com/. She holds an M. Phil degree in English Literature from the University of Jadavpur, Calcutta, India. She emigrated to Canada from India in 1999 with her husband and two children.
Saanjana Kapoor is a Bachelor of Arts student at the University of Melbourne. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Voiceworks, Underground Writers, Island, Paper Lanterns, Cordite Poetry Review, and more. She is an artist for the 2021 National Young Writers’ Festival.
Saba Karim Khan is an author, award-winning filmmaker and educator, whose writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Wasafiri, Huff Post, Verso, Think Progress, DAWN, etc. Her debut novel, Skyfall, was recently released by Bloomsbury and her documentary film, Concrete Dreams: Some Roads Lead Home, produced by the Doha Film Institute (DFI), has been officially selected and won awards at global film festivals in Paris, Berlin, Toronto, USA and India. She has read Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and works at NYU Abu Dhabi. Before joining the Academy, she worked as Country Marketing and Public Affairs Head at Citigroup. Born in Karachi, she now lives in Abu Dhabi with her husband and two daughters. Saba can be contacted at sabakarimkhan.com and via Twitter @SabaKarim.
Sabir Zazai is a former refugee from Afghanistan who now leads the Scottish Refugee Council. Sabir’s early education was interrupted by the war in Afghanistan, when he was internally displaced with his family when he was still at primary education. However, his resilience, hope and a strong desire for education helped him to graduate from Coventry University with a degree in Human Resources Management, and a Masters in Community Cohesion Management. Recently he was conferred with a Honorary Doctorate at the University of Glasgow for services to community, and received the Lord Provost award for human rights. Sabir is now Honorary President of City of Sanctuary and a Visiting Practice Fellow at the Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University.
Saliha Haddad is a junior literary agent at Worlds Arts Agency. She graduated in the field of Anglophone Literature and Civilization in 2015. She is a literary interviewer for the online magazine Africa in Dialogue. Her debut creative nonfiction piece has appeared in the African magazine Agbowo. Haddad is the Fiction Co-editor of the South African based literary journal, Hotazel Review.
Sanmeet Kaur is a freelance writer and has written for a number of publications including gal-dem, Metro, i newspaper, Media Diversified and Oh Mag. She lives in London and can be found on Twitter at @sanmeeet.
Sara Cook is a cellist studying on the MA Chamber Music Course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is also an Alexander Technique and cello teacher. As a teacher, she instils curiosity, thoughtfulness, and kindness into her students. In her free time, she enjoys hiking in the mountains of Scotland.
Shukria Rezaei is a Hazara from Afghanistan. She has been living in the UK since 2011, from the age of 14. She studied for her GCSEs and A-Levels in the UK during which she began her writing journey as well. Her poems primarily focus on her refugee journey and the plight of her Hazara people. She has been featured on BBC Radio and Channel Four and published in various other anthologies and online media. She has just completed her masters degree in human rights and politics and wishes to go into the field of NGOs and Humanitarian organisations.
Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a writer from the Greater Toronto Area, Canada. She is the recipient of the inagural Vijay Nambisan Fellowship 2019 and the recipient of The Robert Hayden Scholarship 2021. She was the Charles Wallace Fellow writer-in-residence (2019-20) at The University of Stirling. She is the author of the chapbook Ghost Tracks (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020) and the founding editor of Parentheses Journal. Website: www.snehasubramaniankanta.com
Sonia Lambert is a writer, journalist and teacher. Her novel Three Mothers was published by Piatkus (Little, Brown) in 2008, and she has written for BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and has recently completed a PhD on the subject of refugees to Britain during WW2 at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also a volunteer at the Refugee Council. Contact: soniamlambert@hotmail.com
Sophie Buchaillard is a Franco-British author who has been living in the UK for twenty years. She writes on the theme of identity and belonging and is currently a PhD candidate looking at migrant literature in a francophone postcolonial context. She has been published in Wales Arts Review and Murmurations Magazine. Square Wheel Press included two of her pieces in their anthology Together and Apart (2020). Her debut novel This Is Not Who We Are (Seren Books) is out in June 2022. Twitter: @growriter Website: www.sophiebuchaillard.com
Stefania Hartley was born and grew up in Palermo, Sicily. She left her sunny island after falling head over heels in love with an Englishman, and now lives in the UK. Having finally learnt English, she now enjoys writing romance and short stories. Find out more on her website: http://www.stefaniahartley.com/
Tara Goldsmith left the country of her birth and much later went back to the third version of the same country. In between, she has travelled the world, exploring not only the cultures of other countries but also her own identity and inner conflicts about family, tradition, loss and the struggle to create a meaningful future. She is now settled in the English countryside with her dogs and books.
Mr Tilden is a black American writer living in Barcelona, Spain.
Timea Sipos is a Hungarian-American writer, translator, written- and spoken-word poet with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her writing appears in Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Juked, and elsewhere. A 2021-2022 Steinbeck Fellow, she has received support from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, and elsewhere.
Tineke Van der Eecken is a well-travelled Flemish-Australian who writes about place as it is affected by colonial history and about climate change. She examines the struggles of human connection within this context, and explores this further through visual art in Tributaries, an exhibition this Nov-Dec 2021. readtraverse.com Facebook: TinekeVanderEeckenAuthor
Usman Mahar is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Munich (LMU). Since 2019 he has been conducting – a German Research Foundation (DFG) funded – research that aims to understand the affective dimensions of deportation and ‘voluntary’ return migration to Pakistan. His alma maters include the University of Heidelberg, University College Utrecht and Aitchison College Lahore.
Victor Pogostin was born in Moscow. He graduated from The School of Translators of the Moscow State Institute for Foreign Languages, worked as translator for the Soviet Trade Mission in India, taught Russian Language and Culture course at the Aligarh Muslim University, served in the Long Range Naval Reconnaissance Aviation of the Northern Fleet. After his return from military service, he defended his PhD dissertation on Ernest Hemingway’s Nonfiction. For many years he worked in the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, while working as a freelance author/translator for national newspapers and literary magazines throughout the former Soviet Union. In addition to translating fiction and nonfiction into Russian, he has compiled, edited, and written introductions and commentaries for over a dozen books by North American authors, including the works of Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. In 1993 he relocated to Canada with his wife and son. His non-fiction has appeared in The National Post (Canada), Canadian Literature magazine, Russian Life magazine (Vermont), The Epoch Times (US & Canada editions), and As You Were: the journal of Military Experience and the Arts (US).
Victoria Chvatal was born in the USSR; emigrated to Australia as a teenager; and emigrated to Israel while in her 40s. She currently lives in Jerusalem with her family.
Vishwas Gaitonde spent his formative years in India, has lived in Britain and now resides in the United States. He has been published in Mid-American Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Iowa Review, Santa Monica Review, Epiphany, and elsewhere. He was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition of the Nottingham Writers’ Studio, England, and his story appears in their anthology, Black Lives. He is on Twitter at @weareji
Votey Cheav is a Cambodian-American daughter of refugees who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide. She was born in a refugee camp and returned to Cambodia to witness its rebirth and resurgence of identity amidst changing geopolitical alliances. She is a trained lawyer and interested in the collective consciousness – the moments and memories that evoke awakening in each of us. Votey is now based in London.
XU XI 許素細 is Indonesian-Chinese from Hong Kong and author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction. A diehard transnational, she co-founded Authors at Large and currently occupies the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Yakin Ajay Kinger is currently a student of the Master’s in Architectural History and Theory program at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. He works on theorising architecture and material culture. His current research focuses on decoding the amnesia and resurgence of a medieval garden in India. His work has been published across various platforms.
Yessica Klein is a Brazilian-born writer based in Berlin, Germany. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Kingston University (UK) and her writing has been featured on 3:AM, The Moth, Magnum Photos, The Lighthouse Review, and more. She was also shortlisted for the 2017 Jane Martin Poetry Prize.
Poetry is Yordanos Gebrehiwot’s way of exploring herself and sharing her experience with the world. Yordanos’s experience as a writer around poetry ignited two years ago when she met Good Chance Theatre and was given an opportunity to instigate her deeply hidden talent. She previously wrote a few poems in her mother tongue Amharic.
Yuan Changming started to learn the English alphabet at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include eleven Pushcart nominations, eleven chapbooks (most recently Limerence) as well as appearances in the Best of Best Canadian Poetry & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1879 others worldwide. Furthermore, Yuan served on the jury for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards (poetry category).
Yulia Tseytlin is a Russian-Israeli that currently resides in Germany. Since submitting her Doctoral dissertation in Economics, she pursues her childhood dream of becoming a fiction writer. Her work explores the genres of literary fiction and contemporary fiction, blending in her personal experiences as a woman, a mother, and an immigrant.
Zohra Mousavi was born in exile to refugee parents. She has studied politics for over seven years only to realise that her passion lies elsewhere: writing. She has founded Wander Kammer Museum – a digital museum that collects and displays refugee stories of (im)mobility and homemaking across the globe. Zohra stays in Berlin with her sister and two nephews, enjoys coffee and the rain.
Zouhour Alkhaled is a Syrian National who arrived in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in Spring 2020. She loves writing because it expresses feelings that the tongue cannot say. When humans cannot change the reality, the pen can. It passes with its lines many eyes, opinions, and ears, it enlightens all that is dark. Zouhour believes that the pen is the only flame capable of lighting light for generations to come. It relieves the soul of feelings and expresses the content of the mind and what it is about.
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