Contributors

Soraya Palmer was born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC with roots in Trinidad and Jamaica. She works in Youth Organizing and holds a BA in Africana Studies an M.F.A. in Fiction. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Black Warrior Review, and Calyx. This is her first novel.

Nicolas Padamsee grew up in Essex. He holds an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and is one of the Observer's best new novelists for 2024. He is the editor of Arts Against Extremism. He splits his time between Norwich and Upton Park, London.

Julianne Pachico was born in 1985 in Cambridge, England and grew up in Cali, Colombia. Her short stories have been published in New Yorker, Granta and the White Review, and she teaches creative writing at UEA.

Born in Essex, Mez Packer works as a lecturer in multimedia and futurism at Coventry University. Before that, she worked as a jazz singer in Portugal. She lives with her partner and her two children in Leamington, Warwickshire. Her debut novel Among Thieves was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Authors Club First Novel Award.

Tezer Özlü was born in 1943 in Turkey and lived in Paris, Ankara, Istanbul, Berlin and Zurich where she died in 1986. Cold Nights of Childhood is her first novel to be translated into English.

Melissa Panarello was born in Sicily in 1985 and now lives in Rome. Her teenage diaries formed the basis of One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, the book that scandalised Europe.

Emanuele Ottolenghi was born in Bologna, Italy. A Political Science graduate of the University of Bologna, he obtained his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and taught Israel Studies at Oxford from 1999 to 2006. Since 2006, he has been the director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute. A frequent commentator on Middle East affairs and transatlantic relations for many English-language and Italian publications, he is the author, most recently, of Autodafé: L'Europa, gli Ebrei e l'Antisemitismo (Lindau, 2007, in Italian).

William Outhwaite studied at the Universities of Oxford and Sussex, where he taught for many years, and has been Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University since 2007. He is the author of numerous ground breaking books on Social Theory.

Amin Osman is a writer, director and composer

Dr Vjosa Osmani Sadriu is the sixth President of the Republic of Kosovo. In the 2021 elections, she became the most voted for politician in the history of elections in Kosovo. Prior to that, she was a five-time Member of Parliament and she served as the first woman Speaker of Parliament. With a steadfast commitment to strengthening democracy and the rule of law, her presidency is marked by her proactive approach in enhancing Kosovo's international standing. During her tenure as President, she's committed to advancing human rights and gender equality, with a particular focus in advancing the role of women in peace and security processes. As an advocate for sustainable development, she actively promotes impactful green energy solutions and climate action measures.

Stephen O'Shea, for many years a journalist in Paris and New York, contributed to a wide variety of publications on the arts and translated French feature films. The Friar of Carcassonne is his third book of medieval history. He currently lives with his two daughters in Providence, Rhode Island. stephenosheaonline.com

Emily Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University and the author of Cribsheet and Expecting Better. Listed as one of TIME's most influential people 2022, her work is centred around humanising data to help people work through hard decisions. She spoke at the 2007 TED conference and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Esquire. Oster is married to economist Jesse Shapiro and is also the daughter of two economists. She has two children.