Tuesday, 10 November 2020

Our congratulations to Malika Booker!

 Malika Booker, who has contributed to Headingley LitFest's poetry in schools project for the past four years, won the 2020 Forward Prize for Poetry in the single poem category. 

The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. For 2020, the judging panel was chaired by writer, critic, and social historian Alexandra Harris alongside poets Kim Moore, Roger Robinson and David Wheatley, and journalist Leaf Arbuthnot. Malika won in the single poem category for her entry The Little Miracles (Magma). She is the founder of the writer’s collective ‘Malika’s Kitchen’. Her first collection, Pepper Seed, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize; she is a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow at the University of Leeds. In the photo she is working with a Year 6 class at Brudenell Primary School in 2019 - scroll down to read the review.

                                                                                            Photo by Richard Wilcocks