This event is part of the new Sheffield Black Humanities Series in collaboration with the Centre for Poetry and Poetics. The Sheffield Black Humanities Series draws together the innovative work happening in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and aims to foster connections and innovations across the University.

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language and ideas. Her novel, Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. She co-presented the BBC's Turn Up for The Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith.  

Vanessa Onwuemezi is a writer living in London. She is the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize in 2019 and her work has appeared in literary and art magazines, including Granta, Frieze and Prototype. Her debut story collection, Dark Neighbourhood, was published in 2021 and was named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of 2021.

Yvonne Battle-Felton’s novel Remembered (Dialogue Books/Blackstone Publishing) was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2019) and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2020). She won the Northern Writers Award in fiction (2017) and received a British Library Eccles Centre and a Kimbilio Fiction Fellowship. Curdle Creek, her second novel, will be published in October, 2024 by Dialogue Books (UK) and Henry Holt (US). She is a senior commissioning editor (literary fiction) at John Murray, and Associate Professor and Academic Director of Creative Writing at Cambridge University Institute of Continuing Education. For her children’s writing, she was commended in the Faber Andlyn BAME (FAB) Prize (2017) and she has six titles in Penguin Random House.