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.

Nabeela Ahmed

BNabeela Ahmed is a writer, multilingual poet and spoken word artist. Her poetry manuscript will be published in 2025 by Yaffle Press. She published her novella, Despite our Differences, in 2018. She delivers readings and creative writing in schools, libraries, museums, for First Story, the National Literacy Trust, online and at various festivals including The Brontes and Jaag. She has compiled two anthologies from these sessions. Her poems have featured in collaboration with artwork and photography atgalleries such as Salts Mills and Trapezium Arts. She hosts Bradford Writes, which platforms local published writers and is responsible for organising the first public Pahari Mushaira in Britain through Intercultured Festival. She has featured on Word of Mouth with Michael Rosen on Radio 4 and her project, The Pahari-Pothwari Literature Project has been selected to deliver new writing for City of Culture Bradford 2025.

Kate Fox

Kate Fox is a stand-up poet, spoken word artist and broadcaster. She is a regular contributor to Radio 4’s spoken word cabaret “The Verb”, has made two comedy series for Radio 4, been Poet in Residence for the Glastonbury Festival and the Great North Run and completed a PhD in stand-up comedy.

She is the author of “Where There’s Muck There’s Bras: True Stories of the North of England’s Women” published by Harper North, and poetry collections including “On Sycamore Gap” (Harper North, 2024), “Bigger On the Inside” (Smokestack Books, 2024) and “The Oscillations” (Nine Arches Press, 2021). She is also a neurodivergent advocate whose latest show “Bigger on the Inside” explores neurodiversity through the lens of Doctor Who.

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.