Malika Booker

Malika Booker (born 1970)^[1] is a British writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist, who is considered^{[by whom?]} "a pioneer of the present spoken word movement" in the UK.^[2][3] Her writing spans different genres of storytelling, including poetry, theatre, monologue, installation and education, and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Organizations for which she has worked include Arts Council England, the BBC, British Council, Wellcome Trust, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Arvon, and Hampton Court Palace.^[4]

Malika Booker FRSL
Born	1970 (age 54–55) London, UK
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Goldsmiths, University of London
Occupation(s)	Poet and artist
Awards	Cholmondeley Award (2019)
Website	malikabooker.com

Biography

Malika Booker was born in London, UK,^[1] to Guyanese and Grenadian parents. She grew up in Guyana and returned to the UK aged 13, with her parents.^[5]

Booker began writing and performing poetry while studying anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.^[5] She founded the poetry collective Malika's Kitchen, which also included Nick Makoha. She took part in The Complete Works mentoring programme. Her first collection of poetry, Pepper Seed, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for best first full collection published in the UK and Ireland.^[6] She was the inaugural Poet In Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.^[7]

Booker's poem "Nine Nights", first published in The Poetry Review in autumn 2016, was shortlisted for Best Single Poem in the 2017 Forward Prize.^[8]

She has written for radio and for the stage, and her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women’s Poetry (1998), The India International Journal (2005), Ten New Poets (2010), Out of Bounds, Black & Asian Poets (2012), and New Daughters of Africa (2019).

Awards

In 2019, Booker received a Cholmondeley Award for her outstanding contribution to poetry.^[9]

In 2020, Booker won the Forward Prize for "Best Single Poem – Written" for "The Little Miracles", published in Magma.^[10] In 2023, she won that prize for that category again, which made her the first woman to win that prize for that category twice. Her 2023 win was for a poem called “Libation”, which the Poetry Review first published.^[11]

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.^[12]

Selected works

• 1998: Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry. Ed. Karen McCarthy (The Women's Press)
• 2000: IC3: The Penguin Anthology of New Black Writing. Eds Courttia Newland and Kadija Sesay (Penguin)
• 2004: KIN: Commemorative Tour Anthology (Renaissance One)
• 2004: The Way We See It, The Way It Is (Lynk Reach)
• 2007: Breadfruit (flipped eye publishing). ISBN 9781905233175
• 2010: Ten New Poets (Bloodaxe)
• 2012: Hidden Gems Volume Two: Contemporary Black British Plays. Ed. Deirdre Osborne (Oberon Books). ISBN 1849436983
• 2013: Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press), ISBN 9781845232115
• 2017: Penguin Modern Poets 3: Your Family, Your Body by Malika Booker, Sharon Olds, Warsan Shire (Penguin). ISBN 0141984023
• 2019: New Daughters of Africa: An international anthology of writing by women of African descent. Ed. Margaret Busby (London:Myriad Editions).