Young Writers Collective

2026 Facilitators

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  Carmin Wong

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  Carmin Wong

  Carmin Wong (she/her/we) is a Guyanese-born poet·organizer, playwright, and dual-title ph.d candidate in english Lit·orature and African American and Diaspora Studies at pennsylvania state university. She is the 2025 inaugural Poet Laureate of State College, Pennsylvania. Rooted in Black feminist praxis and a Caribbean diasporic sensibility, her work explores the intersections of oral and written poetries, with particular attention to Black liberation movements across the long twentieth century. 

  Her work has been supported by the Africana Research Center (ARC) and the Center for Black Digital Research at Pennsylvania State University, where she is a #DigBlk fellow and #Harper200 Poetry Project Coordinator. Her poetry has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets and featured in a number of journals and on public radio. 

  Carmin is co-author of the choreopoems A Chorus Within Her and What Does Purple Sound Like?, and playwright of Finding Home: Adeline Lawson Graham, centering 19th-century free Black Pennsylvanians. A recipient of multiple artist grants and fellowships, she teaches poetry to justice-impacted students across jails, prisons, and juvenile detention centers, as well as in K–12 schools, college classrooms, and community programs. 

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  Caroline Bird

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  Caroline Bird

  Caroline Bird, an English poet and playwright who published her first poetry collection at just 15 years old. Her work has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection and been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Prize and the Polari Prize. Bird’s work is celebrated for its masterful use of imagery, wit, and voice.

   

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  Cecilia Knapp

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  Cecilia Knapp

  Cecilia Knapp is a poet, playwright and novelist. 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. She curated the anthology Everything is Going to be alright: Poems for When you Really Need Them, published by Trapeze in 2021. Her debut novel Little Boxes is published by The Borough Press (Harper Collins.)

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  Courtney Conrad

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  Courtney Conrad

  Courtney Conrad is a Jamaican poet. Her debut pamphlet I Am Evidence is published by Bloodaxe Books. She is a winner of the Eric Gregory Award, Michael Marks Award, Bridport Prize Young Writers Award and Mslexia Women’s Pamphlet Prize. Shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize, the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award’s Poetry Prize, the Bridport Poetry Prize, Derby Poetry Festival Poetry Prize and the Poetry Wales Pamphlet competition. Longlisted for the National Poetry Competition, Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize and The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition.

  Her poems have appeared in Poetry Review, Magma Poetry, Propel Magazine, Poetry Wales, The White Review, Stand Magazine, The Indianapolis Review, Bath Magg, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Anthropocene Poetry Journal, Lumiere Review and The Adriatic Magazine. Her work has been anthologised by Anamot Press, Bridport Prize, Re.creation, Peekash Press, Bad Betty Press and Flipped Eye Press.

   

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  Fiona Benson

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  Fiona Benson

  Fiona Benson, an English poet whose three collections have all been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her work has also won the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry’s Prize for First Full Collection, the Roehampton Poetry Prizeand the Forward Prize for Best Collection. 

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  Isabelle Baafi

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  Isabelle Baafi

  Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which won the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection and is shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her pamphlet Ripe(ignition press, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She won First Prize in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2023 and Second Prize in the London Magazine Poetry Prize 2022. Her writing has been published in Granta, the TLS, The Poetry Review, Callaloo, The London Magazine and elsewhere. She edits at Poetry London and Magma. 

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  Mary Jean Chan

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  Mary Jean Chan

  Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry. Bright Fear (Faber, 2023), their second book, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Writers’ Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Chan co-edited 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan and is currently Departmental Lecturer in Poetry on the MSt in Creative Writing at Oxford.

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  Natalie Shapero

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  Natalie Shapero

  Natalie Shapero’s latest book is Stay Dead (2025), published in the U.S. by Copper Canyon Press and in the U.K. by Out-Spoken Press. Stay Dead was longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Natalie’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is the author of the previous poetry collections Popular Longing (2021), Hard Child (2017), and No Object (2013), and she has performed at The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at UC Irvine. 

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  Nii Ayikwei Parkes

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  Nii Ayikwei Parkes

  Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian-British writer and producer, primarily known for the acclaimed hybrid novel, Tail of the Blue Bird. Translated in multiple languages, he has written for National Geographic, Financial Times, Condé Nast Traveller, The Guardian, and Lonely Planet, and his freelance research work explores the praeter-colonialism survivals of African philosophy, skills and ways of being in Africa and the African diaspora. As a poet and editor Nii Ayikwei has worked with poets such as Malika Booker, Niall O’Sullivan, Warsan Shire and Roger Robinson, and his works include the collections The Makings of You and The Geez, as well as the 2002 CD Incredible Blues. 

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  Pádraig Ó Tuama

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  Pádraig Ó Tuama

  Pádraig Ó Tuama (b. 1975, Ireland) is a poet with interests in language, violence, power, and religion. He is the host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound and has published volumes of poetry, essays, a memoir and theology. 2025 saw the publication of the poetry collection Kitchen Hymns and the anthology 44 Poems on Being with Each Other; A Poetry Unbound Collection (Canongate and WW Norton). In Autumn 2026 he will take up the role as Professor in the Practice of Spirituality at Yale Divinity School. 

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  Rachel Long

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  Rachel Long

  Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions (Picador, U.K, 2020 / Tin House, US, 2021) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, the Jhalak Prize Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The US edition featured in the New York Times Book Review, and was named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME. She is currently in her final year of a PhD at King’s College, London. Her second collection, Sparrow on the Rooftop, will be published by Chatto & Windus in June 2026. 

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  Richard Siken

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  Richard Siken

  Richard Siken is a poet and painter. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Siken is a recipient of fellowships from Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona 

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  Roger Robinson

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  Roger Robinson

  Roger Robinson is a fervent, generous poet. His most recent collection, A Portable Paradise, won both the 2019 T. S. Eliot Prize and the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize 2020 for a distinguished work evoking the spirit of a place – in this instance, post-Windrush Britain. His poetry has been featured in a number of prominent anthologies, including The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain and Bloodaxes’ Out of Bounds: British Black and Asian Poets. He is an alumni of The Complete Works, a national mentorship programme founded by Bernadine Evaristo MBE, and Robinson’s own work as an educator is now core to his practice: his workshops have been recognised by various organisations, including the Gulbenkian Museum Prize, and he is a co-founder of both Spoke-Lab and the international writing collective Malika’s Kitchen.

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  Safia Elhillo

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  Safia Elhillo

  Sudanese by way of Washington D.C., Safia Elhillo is the author of Girls That Never Die, The January Children, Home Is Not a Country, and Bright Red Fruit, and co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem and Stanford University, and her awards include a California Book Award, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and an Arab American Book Award. She has been a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Kirkus Prize and the LA Times Book Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her work has appeared in The Penguin Book of Migration Literature and The New Yorker, among others. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is a co-poetry editor at Callaloo and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University.

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  Sarah Howe

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  Sarah Howe

  Sarah Howe’s first book, Loop of Jade (2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second collection, Foretokens (2025) is a PBS Choice and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She is the Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus.

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  Toby Campion

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  Toby Campion

  Toby Campion is an award-winning poet, playwright, presenter and poetry educator, born and raised in Leicester. Winner of the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2024 and shortlisted for Best Single Poem in the Forward Prizes 2024, Toby is a former UK Poetry Slam Champion and World Poetry Slam finalist. His poetry won the Aurora Prize for Poetry 2019 and the Poetry on the Lake Prize 2017, awarded by then Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. His debut short poetry collection, Through your blood(Burning Eye 2017), was nominated for the Polari First Book Prize and Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry Prizes 2018. His poetry has been published widely, most recently in The Rialto, bath magg & The London Magazine. His work is featured in anthologies including 100 Queer Poems (Vintage 2022), The Book of Hope (Bluebird 2021), Everything Is Going To Be Alright (Trapeze 2021) and The Forward Book of Poetry (Forward 2019). 

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  Victoria Adukwei Bulley

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  Victoria Adukwei Bulley

  Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet and writer whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books, LitHub, and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, QUIET, won the Folio Prize for Poetry, the John Pollard Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. QUIET is published by Faber & Faber in the UK and in North America by Knopf. 

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  Victoria Kennefick

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  Victoria Kennefick

  Victoria Kennefick is a poet, writer and teacher from Shanagarry, Co. Cork now based in Co. Kerry. Her first collection, Eat or We Both Starve, was published by Carcanet Press in March 2021. It won the Seamus Heaney Prize for Best First Collection 2022 and The Dalkey Literary Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award 2022. It was also  shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, The Costa Poetry Book Award, The Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and The Butler Literary Prize. It was a Book of the Year in The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Sunday Independent and The White Review, and was also selected as one of The Telegraph’s Best Poetry Books to Buy 2021.

  Her pamphlet, White Whale (Southword Editions, 2015), won the Munster Literature Centre Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition and the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Poetry Review, PN Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Poetry News, Prelude, Copper Nickel, The Irish Times, Ambit, bath magg, Banshee, Bad Lilies, PBLJ and elsewhere.

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  Yomi Ṣode

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  Yomi Ṣode

  Yomi Ṣode is an award-winning Nigerian British writer. He is a recipient of the 2019 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship, shortlisted for The Brunel International African Poetry Prize 2021, and Arts Foundation Awards 2024.

  His acclaimed one-man show COAT toured nationally to sold-out audiences, including at the Brighton Festival, Roundhouse Camden and the Battersea Arts Centre. In 2020 his libretto Remnants, written in collaboration with award-winning composer James B. Wilson and performed with Chineke! Orchestra premiered on BBC Radio 3.

  In 2021, his play, and breathe… starring BAFTA award winning, David Jonsson, premiered at the Almeida Theatre to sold-out audiences, rave reviews and garnered four Black British Theatre Awards. Yomi is a Complete Works alumnus and a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. He is the founder of BoxedIn, First Five, The Daddy Diaries, and mentorship programme, 12 in 12. Yomi’s debut collection, Manorism was shortlisted for the T.S Eliot Prize 2022, The Rathbones Folio Prize 2023, and was adapted for stage at the Southbank Centre. Yomi’s debut novel, The Interpreter, has been acquired and will be published by Viking.