Palestine in Words

David Morrissey is an accomplished English actor, director and producer. He is well known for a variety of TV roles, including State of Play, Blackpool, The Walking Dead, The Missing, Britannia series I, II & III and the critically acclaimed series The Long Shadow and Sherwood. David worked with the RSC and the National Theatre for many years, and returned to his home town of Liverpool in 2011 to perform in Macbeth at the Everyman Theatre where he started his career. More recently he has performed on the London stage in the critically acclaimed play Hangmen at the Royal Court and Julius Caesar at The Bridge Theatre where he took on the role of Marc Antony. He has just finished performing in a Pinter double bill at the Theatre Royal Bath. David recorded the first series of his podcast Who Am I This Time in 2020 and it is now in its third series.

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry and a novel. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize and was the subject of a Radio 4 arts documentary, Butch. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. A former UK SLAM Champion she founded the national youth poetry slams SLAMbassadors through the Poetry Society in 2001, remaining its Artistic Director until 2018. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year.

John Siddique is the author of Signposts of The Spiritual Journey, a book on accessing greater authenticity and meaning in our lives and ‘So’ (Collected New Poems 2011-21) and seven other books. His poetry collection Don’t Wear It on Your Head is a perennial favourite with younger readers.

His work has been featured in Time, Women and Home, The Tablet, Granta, the Guardian, Poetry Review, the Rialto and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Besides his books and writing life, John is a hugely popular meditation teacher. He is the creator of two online courses, ‘Self-Acceptance Through Authenticity’ and ‘Magical Moments’, and his online meditations have had over two million downloads.

Selma is a British Palestinian writer of fiction. Born in Scotland, she has lived in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, France, Egypt and the West Bank. Her fictive work includes the novel Out of It (Bloomsbury), which is set between Gaza, London and the Gulf. She is also the editor of We Wrote In Symbols; Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers (Saqi, 2021). Her short stories are published in numerous anthologies. She has also written radio plays and for stage and screen. Her non-fiction includes a recent series of blogs for the London Review of Books. She is qualified as a solicitor and has worked in the field of human rights and international criminal law with organisations in Jerusalem, Cairo and London. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths University in Creative Writing.

Zaffar Kunial lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, and was born in Birmingham. His debut collection, Us, was shortlisted for a number of prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize. England’s Green, his latest collection, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Ondaatje Prize, and won the 2023 Ledbury Hellens Poetry Prize.

Alexandra Pringle was Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury Publishing for 20 years, her authors including Susanna Clarke, Richard Ford, Elizabeth Gilbert, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, Colum McCann, Madeline Miller, Ann Patchett, George Saunders, Kamila Shamsie, Ahdaf Souief and Patti Smith. She is a Patron of Index on Censorship, a Trustee of Reprieve and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has been awarded Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Letters from Anglia Ruskin and Warwick Universities.