Saju Ahmed

Saju is a Leeds-based spoken word poet and rapper of Bangladeshi and Irish heritage whose work confronts social issues and deconstructs stereotypes. He began writing in 2005 with Leeds Young Authors and represented the UK at the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam from 2006–2008, later coaching the team to 2nd place in 2009. A published poet and case study in Teach Like a Writer by Jennifer Webb, Saju has also featured on BBC 1Xtra Live Lounge and in the BBC short film series Present Tense. His poetry appeared in BBC 1Xtra: On the Ground, BBC Four’s Rhyme and Reason, and the documentaries We Are Poets and Dyslexia and Loving Words. He wrote and acted in Ode to Partition, exploring the impact of the 1947 partition of South Asia. Saju was also active in the Chicago peace movement, using art and activism to inspire change.

Rachel Bower

Rachel Bower is a poet and novelist from Bradford. Her poems and stories have been widely published in literary magazines, including The White Review, Magma, The Rialto and The London Magazine.

Emma Conally-Barklem

Emma Conally-Barklem is an author, poet, creative writing facilitator and yoga teacher based in Yorkshire. In 2023, she was New Northern Poet for Ilkley Literature Festival. She curated her first poetry collection ‘The Ridings’ into a photography and poetry exhibition based on her own family life, ‘The Ridings: Bradford Working-Class Family Life, Loss & Landscape: 1970’s-1990’s’ at South Square Gallery in her hometown of Bradford. ‘Hymns from the Sisters’ was written after a residency at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Emma won the Black in White Poetry Prize 2024. Her first novel, ‘Yoga Homicide’ was shortlisted for the 2024 Book Edit Writers’ Prize. Her third poetry collection ‘Emily Brontë’s Hawk’ will be published by The Black Cat Poetry Press in 2026.

Antony Dunn

Antony Dunn has published four collections of poems, Pilots and Navigators (Oxford University Press), Flying Fish (Carcanet OxfordPoets), Bugs (Carcanet OxfordPoets) and Take This One to Bed (Valley Press).

Winner of the Newdigate Prize and an Eric Gregory Award, he edited and introduced Ex Libris, a posthumous collection of poems by David Hughes (Valley Press).

Antony is a regular tutor for The Poetry School and the Arvon Foundation. He has worked on a number of translation projects with poets from Holland, Hungary, Israel and China.

He has been Poet in Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival, the University of York and the People Powered Press. Until 2018 he was Artistic Director of the Bridlington Poetry Festival.

Antony lives in Leeds.

Kemmi Gill

Kemmi Gill is a passionate writer, musician, performer and youth worker from Bradford. Kemmi has headlined many shows, including the Bradford 2025 launch event, RISE.

Zaffar Kunial

Zaffar Kunial lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. His debut collection, Us, was shortlisted for a number of prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize. England’s Green, his latest collection, has been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Ondaatje Prize.

Andrew McMillan

Andrew McMillan’s debut collection physicalwas the only ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award (2016), an Eric Gregory Award (2016) and a Northern Writers’ award (2014). It was shortlisted the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2016, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation forAutumn 2015. In 2019 it was voted as one of the top 25 poetry books of the past 25 years by the Booksellers Association. His second collection, playtime, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018, a Poetry Book of the Month in both The Observerand The Telegraph, a Poetry Book of the Year in The Sunday Times and won the inaugural Polari Prize. His third collection, pandemonium, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021, and 100 Queer Poems, the acclaimed anthology he edited with Mary Jean Chan, was published by Vintage in 2022 and was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards.Physical has been translated into French, Galician, German and Norwegian editions, with a double-edition of physical &playtimepublished in Slovak in 2022. He is Professor of Contemporary Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His debut novel, Pity, was published by Canongate in 2024, and was named as one of the top 20 books of 2024 by The Independent. It has been translated into numerous languages including Norwegian, Swedish, French, German, Turkish and Slovak.

Kim Moore

Kim Moore’s pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolveswas a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection The Art of Falling(Seren 2015) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married(Seren, 2021) won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her first non-fiction book What The Trumpet Taught Mewas published by Smith/Doorstop in May 2022. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University andthe Deputy Programme Leader for the MA/MFA in Creative Writing. A hybrid book of lyric essays and poetry Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism was published by Seren in March 2023.

John Siddique

John Siddique is an author and sacred teacher. He has written nine books of poetry and non-fiction, including the recent ‘Signposts of The Spiritual Journey’and ‘SO’. John is also the Project Co-ordinator for the Royal Literary Fund & WritersMosaicin The North of England. He has been featured in Time, The Guardian, Granta, The Bookseller,CNN and the BBC,and his meditations and teachings have connected with millions of people globally, offering deep insight into the nature of life and self-discovery. He has served as Canterbury Laureate and British Council Poet-in-Residence at CSU-Los Angeles. He is also an Honorary Writing Fellow at Leicester University.

Kirsty Taylor

Kirsty Taylor is a writer and educator inspired by her beloved hometown Bradford. She is passionate about story telling through poetry and has performed all over the country telling tales about people, class and the realities of Broken Britain. Kirsty was a BBC Verb New Voice in 2017 and was awarded the Apples and Snakes & Jerwood Arts Poetry in Performance award in 2020. She is the creator of the imitable Front Room Poetry, which takes nanna style living rooms and world class poets to unusual settings suchas car parks and housing estates.

In 2022 Kirsty’s first full length play Cashy C’s: The Musical, a unique rap and bassline show about poverty and austerity sold out all it’s shows in under twenty four hours, received five star reviews and was voted inThe Guardian Readers favourite stage shows of 2022. In January 2024 she was awarded the Kay Mellor Fellowship and is pursuing her writing with support from Rollem Productions and Leeds Play House, developing an idea for screen and theatre about mothers who have had their children removed.

Kirsty opened Bradford’s City of Culture year in January performing her words to 20,000 across the weekend in City Park.