Trustees
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Kate Arthurs is head of arts evaluation at the British Council where she supports colleagues worldwide to show the impact of their work in arts and cultural relations, in literature and other sectors. Kate previously worked for the British Council overseas for seven years, running arts and society projects in Vietnam, Mexico, Belgium and Spain. She became a friend of Wasafiri in 2008 when, as a consultant on arts and literature projects, she curated and managed the India cultural programme at the London Book Fair. She joined the Wasafiri board in 2011. |
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Margaret Busby OBE became the UK’s youngest and first black female publisher when she co-founded Allison & Busby Ltd, of which she was editorial director for 20 years. She was subsequently editorial director of Earthscan Publications. She is an award-winning writer, editor, critic, consultant and broadcaster, and has served as a judge for many literary awards, including the Orange Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Caine Prize for African Writing. She edited Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writing by Women of African Descent (1992), has contributed to many publications and written drama for BBC radio and for the stage. Margaret is also an ardent campaigner for diversity in publishing, co-founding GAP (Greater Access to Publishing) in the 1980s. She is currently patron of Independent Black Publishers (IBP) and a member of the Arts Council’s Diversity in Publishing steering group.
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Alison Donnell is Professor of Modern Literatures in English at the University of Reading, UK. She has published widely on Caribbean and black British writings, including a book-length revision of literary history: Twentieth Century Caribbean Literature: Critical Moments in Anglophone Literary History (Routledge, 2006). She is co-editor, with Michael A Bucknor, of The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature (Routledge, 2011). A Founding Editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, she is on the editorial boards of Journal of West Indian Literature and MaComere. She is currently working towards a monograph Caribbean Queer. Alison joined the Wasafiri board in 2011.
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Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi, Pakistan and moved to Britain in 1970. His first collection of short stories, Mirror to the Sun, was published in 1993. Since then he has produced several other collections: This Other Salt (1999), Turquoise (2002), Insomnia (2007), and a novella, Another Gulmohar Tree (2009). He is a well-known reviewer and literary critic and has been a member of the Wasafiri Board since 1994. Aamer has also published translations of Urdu poetry and fiction in English and was one of the judges in 2002 of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize amongst others. In 2000 he edited Hoops of Fire: Fifty Years of Fiction by Pakistani Women (2000), amplified and updated as Kahani (2005). Aamer is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Senior Lecturer in the Department English at the University of Southampton. Visit his webpage at www.aamerhussein.com. |
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Abu Bundu-Kamara began his career with Pearson in 2002 when he joined the Penguin Group as Diversity Manager. During this time, he organised Penguin's first ever diversity week in July 2006, highlighting some of the complex issues surrounding diversity. He took on the role of UK Diversity Manager in 2006. Prior to joining Pearson he worked for Ryman’s the stationer, Enron and the Canary Wharf Management Group. Abu is also a member of the Steering Committee for the Diversity in Publishing Network (DIPNET). He chairs a UK Network for Diversity Practitioners and speaks regularly at conferences on the topic of diversity. Abu Bundu-Kamara is the Head of Diversity & Inclusion for Pearson, and has global responsibility for Pearson’s diversity and inclusion policies, operational excellence and strategy. Abu has over ten years’ experience in business and human resource management. Abu joined the Wasafiri board in 2011. |
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Gary McKeone was Literature Director at Arts Council England from 1995-2006. Before that he worked with Field Day Theatre Company in |
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Lawrence Scott is from Trinidad & Tobago. His novel Aelred's Sin (1998) was awarded a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book in Canada and the Caribbean, (1999). His first novel Witchbroom (1992) was short-listed for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize (1993), Best First Book. This was followed by Ballad for the New World (1994), including the Tom-Gallon Award prize-winning short-story The House of Funerals (1986). His novel, Night Calypso (2004) was also short-listed for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book Award, long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2006), and translated into French as Calypso de Nuit (2005). His most recent publication is as Editor of Golconda Our Voices Our Lives, an anthology of oral histories and other stories and poems from the sugar-belt in Trinidad (UTT Press, 2009). His new novel, Light Falling on Bamboo will be published in September 2012 by Tindal Street Press. He lives in London and Port of Spain, and is at www.lawrencescott.co.uk. Photo copyright Eugene McConville. Lawrence joined the Wasafiri board in 2011. |
