Readers from the floor welcome.
Guest readers: Cecilia Knapp, Rowe Irvin, Lena Ngoudjo hosted by Maggie Hampford and Grace Moorhouse.
Cecilia Knapp is a poet and novelist and the Young People’s Laureate for London 2020/2021. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward prize for best single poem. She is the winner of the 2021 Ruth Rendell award and has been shortlisted for both the Rebecca Swift Women’s prize and the Outspoken poetry prize. Her debut poetry collection Peach Pig was published by Corsair in 2022 and was the Observer’s poetry book of the month for October. Her poems have appeared in The Financial Times, Granta, The White Review, Wasafiri, Popshot, Ambit, Magma and bath magg and anthologised. MORE...
Rowe Irvin is a writer and artist. In 2025 she was named one of The Observer’s Best New Novelists. Her work has appeared in Prototype, Southword, Unquiet Slumbers (Nepenthé Press) and The Stinging Fly. She was awarded second prize in the 2024 Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Bath Short Story Award. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester. Her debut novel, Life Cycle of a Moth, is published by Canongate Books.
Lena Ngoudjo is multidisciplinary artist woven by her obsession with undressing the raw beauty of the bare self through the complexities of self-expression and the merging realms intersecting culture and identity. Her craft focuses on untangling Black expression and the strangeness of humanity amongst nature, often juxtaposing the joys and pains of life. Through her passion for all things poetic, sonic, and visually striking, she stirs a mixture of performance, spoken word poetry, and multimedia art that challenges traditional Western ideology and contemporary art forms.
