Committee

  • Francesca Sobande

    Francesca Sobande is a writer and reader in digital media studies at Cardiff University. Her books include The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Consuming Crisis: Commodifying Care and COVID-19 (SAGE, 2022), and Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture (University of California Press, 2024). She is also the co-author of Black Oot…

  • Carole Burns

    Carole Burns is a prize-winning author whose most recent book, The Same Country (Legend Press, 2023), was named a top 2023 Welsh fiction book by the Wales Arts Review.  A journalist for publications such as the Washington Post and LitHub, she recently served as the lead fiction judge for the 2025 Wales Book of the…

  • Susan Stokes-Chapman

    Susan Stokes-Chapman is an English author of historical fiction. She studied at Aberystwyth University, where she completed a BA in Education and English Literature, followed by an MA in Creative Writing. A longstanding affinity for Wales – cultivated since childhood – led her to settle in Gwynedd in 2021. Susan’s debut novel Pandora was released…

  • Alycia Pirmohamed

    Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born author currently based in Edinburgh. Her writing spans poetry, creative nonfiction, and literary criticism. In 2022, her collection Another Way to Split Water was published with Polygon Books, and in 2023, she won the Nan Shepherd Prize for her debut book of nonfiction, A Beautiful and Vital Place, forthcoming with…

  • Marlene Lowe

    Storytelling has always been at the heart of everything Marlene does. Whether through her work as an author, her business in marketing and storytelling, or her roles within organisations that bring people together, she has always been drawn to the way stories shape our world and our connections within it. With a passion for storytelling…

  • Tom Jeffreys

    Tom is a writer who lives in Edinburgh. His work is mostly creative non-fiction in response to art and place, and he regularly collaborates with artists and cultural organisations. Tom’s books include: Walking: Documents of Contemporary Art (Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, 2024); To an island in a loch on an island in a…

  • Juliet Gilkes Romero

    Juliet Gilkes Romero is an award-winning writer for stage and screen.  She was Writer in Residence at the National Theatre 2022/2023 attached to the New Works Department. Juliet is the recipient of the Alfred Fagon award for Best New Play 2020, the Roland Rees Bursary 2019, named in honour of the co-founder of the Alfred Fagon…

  • Dean Atta

    Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British writer from London known for his heartfelt storytelling rooted in his Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage. He writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for all ages. For adult readers, his poetry collection, I Am Nobody’s Nigger, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize, and his memoir, Person Unlimited:…

  • Connor Allen

    Connor Allen is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and former Children’s Laureate Wales (2021-2023). He’s written for BBC Wales, BBC Radio 4, Wales Millennium Centre, and others. He wrote and performed in his acclaimed show The Making of a Monster, and was the 2023 winner of the Imison Award for his debut audio drama of the…