Audio/visual invites conversations about the significance and impact of visual communication (art, design, imagery, media, advertising, maps) and audio communication through music, but also the impact of language choice, and conversation. Events in this segment foreground meaning conveyed by music and art, and invite attention to global artists working in experimental ways with sound and the visual arts.
The Formations programme is an online series of free, public events led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.
Friday 6 May 2022, 7 – 8 pm
Ever wondered how you might increase your understanding of cinema? This one-off workshop will offer you the chance to examine films and their content more clearly, giving you the tools to analyse movies and their messages. Including plenty of clips, case studies, and discussion, we will deconstruct imagery, character and visual metaphor affording you the opportunity to appreciate Hollywood and beyond with a deeper understanding of the film making craft.
This workshop is online via Microsoft Teams, spaces are limited.
Wednesday 11 May 2022, 7 – 8 pm
In this online event, artist Kate McMillan will be talking about various projects exploring the postcolonial legacies of former penal colonies, prison islands alongside the ongoing use of extraterritorial detention by countries such as Australia and the United States. We will be talking about of the notion of ‘listening with my feet’ – listening as a decolonial tool on contested ground, and the influence of indigenous thinking on McMillan growing up in Australia. We will also explore McMillan’s collaborative work with Cat Hope considering ways in which systemic silencing of those both displaced and detained as part of colonial and neocolonial modes of government might be listened to differently.
Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Wednesday 15 June 2022, 7 – 8.30 pm
Join us for an evening of music with The Venus Bushfires, interluded with a conversation with Bethan Evans.
The Venus Bushfires is a creative collective of one and many, of which Helen Epega is the only constant member. The Nigerian-British singer-songwriter, composer and performance artist explores the ethereal sounds of the ‘hang’, the power of the talking drum and the quirks of children’s toys cross-fertilising multiple visual and musical styles.
This event will take place at Bonington Gallery.
Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Friday 24 June 2022, 7 – 8 pm
Join us to hear Leone Ross read from her latest novel, This One Sky Day, in discussion with Bethan Evans.
Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer, editor/copy-editor, and reviewer of fiction. She was born in Coventry England, and when she was six years old migrated with her mother to Jamaica, where she was raised and educated. After graduating from the University of the West Indies in 1990, Ross returned to England to complete a Master’s degree in International Journalism at City University, in London, where she now lives. Ross’s writing is genre-bending and world-tilting, revelling in the magical realist and surrealist.
10 randomly selected people signed up to the event will receive a free copy of This One Sky Day. This event will be online via YouTube Live.
Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Destiny Ekaragha once said that Black British filmmakers were not expected to make films about ordinary family stories and everyday things – like love. This segment foregrounds the transformative nature of the everyday feeling of love in art, writing, and research, while it also helps us to think about how the concept of love is defined, understood, and restricted, if love is understood and represented in limited ways. The free, online events in this segment consider the expression, meaning, contexts, and impact of love by exploring the work of artists, writers and thinkers, emphasising questions of gender, sexuality, race, and culture.
The segment begins with a conversation between Eve Makis and Young Adult fiction writer Nicola Garrard, whose novel about love and canal journeys 29 Locks was recently published by HopeRoad, one of the publishers that we work with very often at the Postcolonial Studies Centre. Later in the segment, we are very excited to welcome Ferdinand Dennis to NTU. His on-campus event with Black Writing in Britain students and book signing will be recorded for a special film event for Formations. Other events in the segment include Formations ‘visits’ to Becky Cullen’s WRAP (Writing, Reading and Pleasure) to join her event with writer Musa Okwonga. In addition, Tom Lockwood-Moran hosts a fascinating book reading and discussion event on the Power of Queer Caribbean Love with Indo-Trinidadian poet Shivanee Ramlochan.
The Formations programme is an online series of free, public events led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.
Tuesday 1 February 2022, 6.30 – 7.30 pm
This free event is a must for anyone who reads Young Adult fiction or has an interest in writing for young people. Nicola Garrard will be talking about her Young Adult novel, 29 Locks, an unflinching depiction of urban teen life in London. The book was shortlisted in the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition. She will be reading from the book and answering audience questions. Hosted by Eve Makis.
You can purchase Nicola Garrard’s newly published novel online.
Watch on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel.
Wednesday 9 February 2022, 1 – 2 pm
Formations is joining NTU’s English Research Seminar series to welcome researcher Jennifer Leetsch who will talk about her recently published book, Love and Space in Contemporary African Diasporic Women’s Writing.
The book combines careful literary analyses with in-depth discussions of cultural and socio-historical contexts by considering the world-making powers of the old novel form in the third millennium as well as the formative effect of new digital media.
Email Jenni Ramone to reserve your free place. You’ll be sent a link to the Teams meeting and further instructions on how to join.
Wednesday 16 February 2022, 6 – 7.30 pm
Bonington Gallery and NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre warmly invite all queer lovers, and allied others, to a belated valentine date: diving the depths with Indo-Trinidadian poet Shivanee Ramlochan. The evening will include readings from Ramlochan’s striking first collection, Everyone Knows I am a Haunting (2017), plus exclusive new writing, and a discussion contextualising queerness and literary Caribbeanness, with NTU literary researcher Thomas Lockwood-Moran (Midlands4Cities-funded doctoral candidate). This discussion seeks to invoke public engagement, which will be heartily welcomed, to empower an exploration of queer love —love of others and crucial self-love. Never avoiding the harsh global realities of oppression and its traumas experienced by queer persons, always multiplied for queer persons of colour, this event will consider the literary throb of Ramlochan’s queer heart as a stalwart shield against colonial oppressions past, present and into the future.
The first 20 Eventbrite sign-ups for this event will receive a free copy of Ramlochan’s stunning poetic spectre Everyone Knows I am a Haunting (2017).
All Eventbrite sign-ups will receive a 20% discount code for Ramlochan’s poetry collection via Pepal Tree Press.
Watch on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel.
Wednesday 23 February 2022, 6.30 – 8 pm
Let us find the ways in which fresh perspectives can make love intimate or silly, surprising or sexy, romantic or sarcastic in our writing. In this generative workshop we will be looking at examples of contemporary poetry and flash fiction that will dispel any clichés and energise rehashed ideas you may have on the subject. You will be given prompts to write your unique pieces.
Open to all skill levels.
Tuesday 5 April 2022, 6.30 – 8 pm
Back by popular demand, Nora Nadjarian will be leading a second workshop on how to write about ‘love’. As before, you will be encouraged to approach the subject in fresh and surprising ways, and given prompts to write your unique pieces. The generative workshop will give insight into contemporary poetry and short fiction and energise rehashed ideas you may have on the subject of “love”.
Open to all skill levels, and limited to 20 participants.
Saturday 19 March, 10:30 am – 12 noon
Following Rita’s hugely popular [online] doll-making workshop in 2021, we are very pleased to welcome Rita back to deliver an in person workshop. In this workshop, you can make your own Empowerment Doll using a range of common materials. Advance registration is required and all materials will be provided on the day. The workshop is open to all, and may be of particular interest to young people age 8-12; younger children supported by an adult; or adults and older children with an interest in dollmaking, textiles, fabrics, or art. All children under 16 must be accompanied by a parent/guardian.
Places are limited to 20 participants.
Thursday 24 March 2022, 6 – 7.30 pm
In this free, livestreamed event, Formations audiences will be able to watch critically acclaimed author Ferdinand Dennis‘ visit to NTU English students from the ‘Black Writing in Britain’ module. Ferdinand will read from his newly published collection of short stories, The Black and White Museum, and discuss his work, life, and career.
From Ferdinand Dennis, the critically acclaimed author of the novel Duppy Conqueror, comes The Black and White Museum, a collection of both highly personal and universal short stories. These at their heart reveal the emotional drama of faded love, the loss of individual and shared memory and the wistful longing for home. His stories powerfully portray the black presence in post-Windrush London, with its hurtling gentrification and everyday racism. Ferdinand’s characters gain wisdom and maturity with age but become powerless, as they are less able to change the course of their lives. For some there is the temptation of a return “home” but home, like London, has also moved on and is not the paradise of their memories.
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Tuesday 29 March 2022, 7 – 8.30 pm
Musa Okwonga joins Dr Becky Cullen for a discussion about his path from an Eton scholarship, Oxford and the Law, to being a Berlin-based writer with a passion for football. Musa will also be talking about poetry, music, and his fabulous new novel In the End, It Was All About Love. Published by Rough Trade, the book is our WRAP spring title and February’s Notts TV Book Club choice. They’ll also be talking about Musa’s football blog and podcast Stadio and Striking Out, his book collaboration with Arsenal legend Ian Wright
Watch WRAP Live with Musa Okwonga on YouTube.
The Formations programme is led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.
The first segment of our 2021-22 Formations programme pays attention to the concept of indigeneity, and to indigenous people, communities, landscapes, artists, writers, and groups. Often considered controversial and closely associated with activism and protest related to rights and land access, indigenous artists and writers are creating some of the most innovative work and asking important questions about sustainability of all forms in New Zealand, Australia, Pacific Islands, Northern Europe, and North and South America. This segment brings together creative work by indigenous writers and artists from separate locations, to forge conversations about the ways in which indigenous scholarship, activism, and creativity is central to global questions of inequality.
Formations events in this segment include a special online screening of In My Blood it Runs, an award-winning collaborative documentary that illustrates what it means to grow up as an Indigenous person in Australia through the story of Dujuan Hoosan, a ten-year-old Arrernte healer living in Alice Springs. Two special events are inspired by this film: a conversation between three researchers undertaking work on indigeneity and indigenous art, writing, and film worldwide: Ngahuia Harrison (University of Auckland), Valentina De Riso (NTU) and Dani-Louise Olver (NTU), and a Creative Writing workshop led by novelist Eve Makis.
Eve Makis also leads two connected events with award-winning writer and poet André Naffis-Sahely, who is in conversation and reading from his work with Eve Makis and Rory Waterman, and then leads a Creative Writing workshop with Eve Makis.
Finally, in this segment Formations hosts students from Nottingham Trent University’s second year English and Creative Writing module, Literary Cultures, led by Jenni Ramone. This year, students deliver a conference with contributors from NTU and their collaborative partners, students from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada. The conference is titled ‘Land of Hope and Toil’, and through guest speaker sessions, talks, and workshops, addresses the diversity of Canadian Literature, considering migrant and indigenous Canadian literature as well as literature written by English and French language settler communities.
Tuesday 30 November 2021, 6 – 7 pm. Followed by a bookable workshop.
While half the world swept west,
we trickled eastward, one by one,
single-file, like fugitives. Next stop:
Abu Dhabi, where my father had a job,and money, for the first time in years . . .
Andre Naffis-Sahely
Raised in Abu Dhabi, by an Iranian father and Italian mother, André’s work is informed by his travels and his cultural inheritance. His work described as clear-eyed, emotionally charged and infused with an acute sense of justice. The Los Angeles-based poet will be talking to us about his life, travels, world view and writing practice. He will be in conversation with the poet, Rory Waterman, and the writer, Eve Makis.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
The talk will be followed by an hour-long writing workshop at 7.15pm led by André on cultural recipe poems. Attendees will be encouraged to write about a dish that is culturally significant to them under André’s expert guidance. Information and booking link below.
Following the conversation event this evening, you are invited to participate in an hour-long writing workshop at 7.15pm led by André on cultural recipe poems. Attendees will be encouraged to write about a dish that is culturally significant to them under André’s expert guidance.
Places on the workshop will be limited so please book early.
All levels welcome.
Wednesday 1 December 2021
Formations hosts students from Nottingham Trent University’s second year English and Creative Writing module, Literary Cultures, led by Jenni Ramone. This year, students deliver a conference with contributors from NTU and their collaborative partners, students from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada. The conference is titled Land of Hope and Toil, and through guest speaker sessions, talks, and workshops, addresses the diversity of Canadian Literature, considering migrant and indigenous Canadian literature as well as literature written by English and French language settler communities.
A full programme can be found here.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Monday 22 November – Friday 31 December
Formations invites you to watch In My Blood it Runs and to take part in the related Conversation event and Creative Writing workshop inspired by the film.
Ten-year-old Dujuan is a child-healer, a good hunter and speaks three languages. As he shares his wisdom of history and the complex world around him we see his spark and intelligence. Yet Dujuan is ‘failing’ in school and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare and the police. As he travels perilously close to incarceration, his family fight to give him a strong Arrernte education alongside his western education lest he becomes another statistic. We walk with him as he grapples with these pressures, shares his truths and somewhere in-between finds space to dream, imagine and hope for his future self.
For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com
Read a review of the film written by Rebecca Rees, BA (Hons) Creative Writing (year 1), Nottingham Trent University here.
Thursday 9 December 7-8pm
In My Blood It Runs is a collaborative documentary that illustrates what it means to grow up as an Indigenous person in Australia through the story of Dujuan Hoosan, a ten-year-old Arrernte healer living in Alice Springs. Dujuan’s wisdom is cherished by his family and tribe, but he struggles in school and faces increasing surveillance from the child welfare and the police. Doctoral researchers Dani Louise Olver (Nottingham Trent University), Ngahuia Harrison (University of Auckland), and Valentina de Riso (Nottingham Trent University) discuss the film in the broader context of Indigenous studies with attention paid to topics of education, justice, history, memory, language, and Indigenous resistance.
For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com
Click here to watch via our YouTube
Thursday 16 December 6 – 7 pm
Writing for young people is a constant exploration of the points where a character’s ordinary world and the reader’s ordinary world intersects. Candy Gourlay will briefly discuss the concept of the “ordinary world” in fiction and break down how she built her indigenous characters from historical readings and contemporary insight.
This reading and conversation event is followed by a creative writing workshop with Candy Gourlay and Eve Makis, limited to 20 participants.
Click here to watch via our YouTube
Thursday 16 December 7:15 – 8:15 pm
Eve Makis invites you to join Candy Gourlay and take part in a Creative Writing workshop inspired by the film that we are screening as part of the Formations segment which pays attention to indigeneity and to Indigenous artists and writers worldwide.
Writing for young people is a constant exploration of the points where a character’s ordinary world and the reader’s ordinary world intersects. Candy Gourlay will briefly discuss the concept of the “ordinary world” in fiction and break down how she built her indigenous characters from historical readings and contemporary insight. Using some research Candy is doing on her current novel, participants will write a short scene under time pressure, share, and discuss.
For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com
The fourth segment of Formations, our year-long programme delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, includes events in March and April under the thematic banner – Formation: DNA. The title ‘DNA’ signals identity, including scientific cataloguing practices, and medical inequalities in postcolonial contexts. Global medical history is replete with controversies over unequal medical practices, and currently, coronavirus death and illness adversely affects non-white and non-wealthy populations. Join us for conversations and workshops about identity, care, inequality, disease, and vaccination.
Thursday 18 March 2021, 5 pm – 6 pm
In this conversation event, Sophie Fuggle (NTU) talks to Aro Velmet (University of Southern California) about the impact and meaning of disease and vaccination in the French colonies of the early twentieth century.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, bacteriologists working French colonies reimagined both the epidemiology and treatment of colonial tuberculosis. What once was seen as an ancient disease now became a European import. And treatment, which in the metropole was oriented around social hygienist practices, such as education, aeration of housing, handwashing, dispensaries and sanatoria visits, became in the colonies focused on one magic bullet: The BCG vaccine, first developed by the Pasteur Institute in 1924. This reimagining of the French “disease of civilization” had profound political consequences for colonial rule – mobilising colonial administrators to rethink their policies and anti-colonial activists from West Africa and Indochina to push for reform and call into question the fundamental tenets of the French “civilising mission”. This talk explores how bacteriological science shaped politics in a globally interconnected empire – from the hospitals of Saigon to colonial exhibitions and anti-colonial protests in 1930s Paris.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Wednesday 31 March 2021, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm & Wednesday 21 April 2021, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm
Hero’s Journey Creative Writing Workshop (with free bespoke writing book) with Postcolonial Studies Centre writer-in-residence Eve Makis and scriptwriter Anthony Cropper.
The Hero’s Journey is a storytelling template developed by the academic Joseph Campbell and influenced by myths and legends. Taking inspiration from heroes in film, the environmental activist Erin Brockovich and Ron Stallworth in BlacKkKlansman, we’ll take a look at how it’s pinned together and how you can use the model to structure your own creative works. We’ll show you how to use your own life experiences to inform your work and make your characters as real and complex as you are.
All participants will receive a free copy of Odyssey – Finding Your Way Through Writing. ‘A roadmap for writing great stories – using your life as inspiration.’
All levels welcome. All participants will have the chance to get their work edited and included on a spoken word album, bringing their written work to life.
Wednesday 28 April 2021, 5 pm – 6 pm
Who is caring for the carers?
The ONS have reported that over 60% of COVID-related deaths on the frontline have come from ethnic minority backgrounds, yet ethnic minorities only make up about 17% of the NHS – with Black people being only 6.1% of that. This disproportion generates a lot of questions that desperately need answers.
Working closely with five Black frontline workers and NHS staff, Kwanzaa Collective UK explored the question: “How do you do a job that involves caring for others, when you are working within a system that doesn’t care about you?”
They wanted to hear what Black frontline workers have experienced during the pandemic and over the course of their career, and to answer the question: “Who is caring for our carers?”
Using the words of the frontline workers and stories from several personal interviews, they compiled spoken word poetry, personalised ‘care packages’ for them, and captured a series of intimate, anonymised portraits.
Behind the line was funded as part of a B-arts (North Staffordshire) CARE R&D. The conversation is hosted by KARVAN: ‘together we travel’ of worldlits.com.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
The third segment of Formations, our year-long programme delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, includes events in January and February under the thematic banner – Formation: Memorials, focusing on the memorialisation of people, places, and histories, through statues and monuments and through writing. We will consider memorialisation in locations including the UK, US, and Pakistan, consider renowned figures and the politics of the statues and other public monuments commemorating them, and invite you to join us for conversations, poetry readings, and writing workshops.
Wednesday 20 January 2021, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Join a writing session with Eve Makis exploring identity and the meaning of resilience, taking inspiration from seminal works by Maya Angelou. All levels welcome.
All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included on a spoken word album bringing their written work to life.
Eve Makis is the author of four novels, a life-writing guide and an award-winning screenplay. She’s recipient of the Young Booksellers International Book of the Year Award and the Aurora Mardiganian Gold Medal, her works shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She teaches fiction on the MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent University where she is writer in residence for the Postcolonial Studies Centre.
Tuesday 26 January 2021, 4 pm – 5 pm
Annum Salman is a spoken word poet from Pakistan, who has undertaken her Creative Writing MA in Surrey and is currently residing in Karachi. Her book shares her experiences as Pakistani Muslim woman and a foreigner tackling mental health issues, sexism and racism. In line with the theme of memorials, Annum will be joining us live from Pakistan to read from her collection Sense Me and discuss identity, tackling racism and sexism, and her relationship with the UK and Pakistan as a Muslim woman. She will be introduced and in conversation with Ramisha Rafique, postgraduate research student at NTU.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Wednesday 3 February 2021, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
Slavery and Public History in the UK and US – A Conversation with Dr Jessica Moody and Professor Stephen Small. Chaired by Dr Jenny Woodley, with Purnachandra Naik.
The histories of both the UK and the USA are inextricably bound up with histories of enslavement and of the enslaved. And yet, both countries have failed to fully recognise or interrogate these pasts. Over recent months activists and campaigners have forced a reckoning with the symbols of this history, from the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, to the fall of numerous Confederate statutes in the United States. They have made headline news and provoked debate about what should be done with monuments to enslavers and what should fill the gaps in our public history.
This online event will bring together two leading scholars of public history and collective memories of slavery. Jessica Moody and Stephen Small will join us for a conversation about histories of slavery and their place in contemporary Britain and the USA.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Wednesday 17 February 2021, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Creative writing workshop inspired by controversial statues. What would a statue say if it could talk? Would it be indignant about its removal? Curse its creator? What stories could it tell you? What late night assignations has it witnessed? Come along and make things up. Express yourself about public art in a creative way.
All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included on a spoken word album bringing their written work to life.
In the second instalment of our year-long Formations programme, delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, we are pleased to announce our November and December events, under the thematic banner – Formation: Land, focusing on land, agriculture, landscape, and place. We will consider dispossession, migration, and ways the human and land interact, and we invite you to think about recent innovative writing about how humans are connected with the living environment and our heritage.
Wednesday 18 November 2020, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
Focusing on the context of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada, this talk considers the ways in which settler-colonialism damages the land and peoples’ relationships to it through exploitation and policies of assimilation, dispossession, and forced relocation aimed at erasing Indigenous identity. Drawing from Lee Maracle’s novel, Celia’s Song, and from Indigenous philosophies of relationality that posit a complex system of relations between peoples and more-than-human beings (animal, plants, ecosystems), Valentina explores how restoring sustainable relationships to the Earth is crucial for establishing and maintaining peaceful relationships between Indigenous peoples and settlers in Canada.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Tuesday 8 December 2020, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Interviewed by Bethan Evans, AHRC Midlands 4 Cities funded doctoral candidate at NTU.
In this event, Jenni discusses the significance of reading for understanding place (Cuba, Nigeria, the UK, and India), and some of the fascinating publishing and reading locations explored in the book. You can purchase a copy of the book here.
Click here to watch via out Youtube
Wednesday 25 November 2020, 6.30 pm – 8pm
Join a session with Eve Makis exploring urban and rural landscape writing. Learn how to evoke a landscape using your senses, taking inspiration from the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Elif Shafak. All levels welcome.
Eve Makis is the author of four novels, a life-writing guide, and an award-winning screenplay. She teaches fiction on the MA Creative Writing course at Nottingham Trent University, where she is writer in residence for the Postcolonial Studies Centre.
All participants will get the chance to have their work edited and included in a planned NTU anthology.
Wednesday 9 December, 9.30 am – 4.30 pm
Join us for a conference curated by a collective of second year NTU English students, centred around Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s The Grassling.
The title of the conference, ‘Longing to Belong’, raises questions surrounding our relationship with the term ‘belonging’. It focuses on writers from the diaspora, as we believe that their relationship with belonging is a unique and under-represented experience. Featuring three guest speakers; Eve Makis, Panya Banjoko and Helen Cousins.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Thursday 10 December 2020, 6.30 pm – 7.30 pm
Eve Makis will be interviewing Alex Wheatle about his recently published YA fiction book, The Cane Warriors.
A prolific writer, Alex has had success in many forms including lyrics, poetry, short stories, plays and novel writing for adults and children. His work has been influenced by Brixton, where he grew up, his Jamaican heritage, and his experiences of living in the Shirley Oaks Children’s Home. He developed a hearty reading habit during his time in prison after the Brixton riots and has never looked back. Alex’s latest Young Adult novel, The Cane Warriors, published to critical acclaim in October, is based on the true story of a slave uprising on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica in the 1700s. In 2008, Alex was awarded an MBE for services to literature and later won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for his book, Crongton Knights.
Alex’s life story was filmed as part of the mini-series, Small Axe, created and directed by Steve McQueen (director of Twelve Years a Slave) and shown on BBC One last Sunday.