Our June 1st event was a great experience, and a lovely way of celebrating our third birthday. There’s a nice write-up of the event on the Brixton Buzz site.

The Writers

Alex Wheatle is an award winning British novelist and has published 8 novels, initially focussing on his life in Brixton as a teenager, and experiences with social care. Alex’s first novel, Brixton Rock, was published to critical acclaim in 1999. Five more novels, East Of Acre Lane, The Seven Sisters, Island Songs, Checkers and The Dirty South followed, all highly praised. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to literature in 2008. A favourite of reading groups and libraries, he is UK’s most read Black British author. He is working on a non-fiction book about Black Britain and has just released a teen novel, Liccle Bit. http://www.thesusijnagency.com/AlexWheatle.htm

Jean Smith is a social and cultural anthropologist who studies and comments on human behaviour, and relationships. Jean works with individuals on confidence building and social skills, at both a personal and group level.  She appears frequently in the media as an expert commentator on cultural behaviour. She also runs the Fearless Flirting Tours; flirting tours of a city’s hotspots, where individuals can put to use Jean’s three methods of flirting. Jean has written for Psychologies magazine and is a frequent contributor to The Science of Relationships website. Her book, The Flirt Interpreter: Flirting Signs from Around the World is out now. www.flirtology.co.uk

Monique Roffey was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and educated in the UK. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novels Sun Dog, and The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, and the Encore Award 2011, and Archipelago which won the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her new novel, House of Ashes, is set on the fictional Caribbean island of Sans Amen, and tells the story of three characters, a gunman, a hostage and a boy soldier caught up in a botched coup d’état, and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. http://moniqueroffey.com/

David McGrath won the Bare Fiction Prize 2014, the Peirene Press Story Competition, placed in the Words with Jam Short Story Competition and was highly commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize 2013. He received MVP for Liars’ League London in 2013. He has won a StorySlam at the Royal Festival Hall and has performed at London LitCrawl, Wilderness Festival, Open Pen Live, Rattle Tales, Story Sessions & several Liars’ League events. His debut novel, Rickshaw is set for release with Thistle on the 10th of June 2015. http://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/authors/david-mcgrath/

Kirstin Innes is an award-winning journalist and debut writer who has just released her first novel, Fishnet, about sex work and political activism. She used to run the Glasgow lit night Words Per Minute, and a veteran of readings at writing events and book festivals, and has appeared on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 talking about her work. Her short stories have been published in a number of anthologies and magazines and commissioned for radio. http://kirstininnes.com

Joanna Biggs is a writer and editor at the London Review of Books, where she has reported on the student protest movement, the recession in Middlesbrough, Legal Aid cuts, censorship in China, and manufacturing. She was born in London. @joannabiggs  #alldaylong  @SerpentsTail

Tony White is the author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber), the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans (Cadogan) and numerous short stories. Tony has edited and co-edited short story anthologies including 1999’s britpulp!—now reissued by Sceptre in ebook. His latest book Shackleton’s Man Goes South is the first novel ever to be published by the Science Museum. Other recent works include Missorts, a permanent, GPS-triggered sound-work for Bristol—http://www.missorts.com/—and a novella, Dicky Star and the Garden Rule (Forma), commissioned alongside works by the artists Jane and Louise Wilson to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Tony White is currently a visiting research fellow at ’Kings College London, and he chairs the board of directors of London’s award-winning arts radio station, Resonance 104.4fm. pieceofpaperpress.com/

Tamim Sadikali designs software for hedge funds by day, runs after his kids in the evening and writes fiction during the dead hours. His first novel, Dear Infidel, is a story about ‘…love, hate, longing and sexual dysfunction, all sifted through the war on terror…’ He blogs about satellite subjects, reviews fiction and non-fiction for Bookmunch among others, and rants on Twitter. http://www.dearinfidel.com

Zelda Rhiando is the author of Caposcripti and A Fist Full of Cherries, and is currently working on a third book, Good Morning Mister Magpie. She lives in Brixton and is one of the organisers of the Brixton BookJam.

Graham Buchan has had short stories published in The London Magazine, Litro, Zembla, Buttefly, Avocado and The Delinquent, and performed by Liars’ League in London, New York and Hong Kong.  The Fjord Question won the Litro / Stanfords competition in 2009. He has published dozens of film and art reviews about the fake rolex in East End Life, The Detour, Reviewed Online, X-bout and BAFTA News; poetry criticism in The Wolf and travel writing in Msifiri and Litro, and written at least one hundred scripts and treatments for film, TV and video. colours-by-graham-buchan

Valdemar Alsop is an unpublished author and social media manager, who will be reading from his first book. Be critical!

John Cullen is the author of Cracking Skulls In Portishead: Antonio Richards is a horror/crime writer from the West Country. On a botched promotional book tour of Los Angeles, Antonio and his friend Hymie Cohen- Rolling Stone journalist aka ‘Supermans Worst Nightmare’, take a trip to Las Vegas and to relax and let Antonio finish a novella he is writing: Cracking Skulls In Portishead. Antonio’s tale takes a darker twist when it’s revealed to be a true story- A story of what lead Antonio Richards to lose his left foot and most of his teeth before he got new ones. As both tales unfold, Antonio tells of the racism he suffered as a child because of his Afro-Carribean father and the car accident that lead to his torture and escape.