Vikram Seth is a poet and novelist whose contributions to literature are harboured in various eclectic and traditional forms. The sites of his poetry and prose are intercontinental, creating literary habitats of far away lands and cultures. In the modern…

Bhanu Kapil is a contemporary British Indian performance artist and poet. Born and raised in West London to Punjabi parents, Kapil recalls an early inclination toward poetry, composing her first verses as “poem(s) to the stars” as a young child….

Canadian poet Richard Harrison is a shrewd writer who is as much concerned with the question of poetry and its composition as he is personal histories; his poems are discursive and self-referential, yet never subordinated to the cerebral in a…

Writing in his 1990s study of Alasdair Gray’s novels, Stephen Bernstein identifies Gray as “one of the most important living writers in English. His satirical blend of realism and fantasy and his compassionate use of humor and sorrow distinguish his…

Ahren Warner grew up in Lincolnshire before moving to London, then Paris. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Confer (Bloodaxe, 2011), which was both a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best…

Jack Underwood is an active presence across the British poetry landscape: as one of the first four poets as part of the Faber New Poets pamphlets scheme in 2009, as Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, tutor…

Pauline Stainer is an English poet, born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. After attending St Anne’s College, Oxford, she moved to Essex, where she raised four children. After several years on the Orkney island of Rousay, she moved to Suffolk, where she lives…

Amy Levy was one of seven children born to a wealthy Anglo-Jewish family. She was in many ways a pioneering woman, becoming the first Jewish woman ever to study at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1879. She had a wide circle…