The Portobello Bookshop's 5th Birthday Party

T L Huchu Chair

T. L. Huchu is a writer whose short fiction has appeared in publications such as Lightspeed, Interzone, Analog Science Fiction and Fact and elsewhere. The Library of the Dead won Best Novel at the Nommo Awards, presented by the African Speculative Fiction Society. And his work has also been short-listed for the Caine Prize and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. Between projects, he translates fiction from Shona into English and the reverse. He is the author of the Edinburgh Nights series.

Nadine Aisha Jassat Chair

Nadine Aisha Jassat is an award-winning writer and author of poetry collection Let Me Tell You This, shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Her writing has featured in numerous anthologies, including It’s Not About the Burqa (shortlisted for the Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award). She has taught and performed across the UK and internationally, and delivers creative projects which often focus on community and social justice. The Stories Grandma Forgot (And How I Found Them) is her debut novel for children.

Roxani Krystalli Chair

Roxani Krystalli is an academic at the University of St Andrews. The animating question of her work is an inquiry into how people imagine worlds in the wake of loss and which relations and practices sustain life. She is currently co-leading a research programme on the political role of love, care, and joy in remaking worlds after mass grief.

Heather Parry Chair

Heather Parry is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, was shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year award and longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. She is also the author of a short story collection, This Is My Body, Given For You, and a short nonfiction book, Electric Dreams: On Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism, and writes the Substack general observations on eggs. She was raised in Rotherham and lives in Glasgow with her partner and their cats, Fidel and Ernesto.

Mary Paulson-Ellis Chair

Mary Paulson-Ellis is an award-winning novelist writing across the boundaries of crime, historical and literary fiction. Her debut, The Other Mrs Walker was a Times bestseller and Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year. Mary’s work has featured in the Guardian and on BBC Radio 4 and in 2019 Val McDermid named her one of ten exciting LGBTQ+ writers working today. In 2023 she was appointed Dr Gavin Wallace Fellow by Edinburgh Unesco City of Literature for work on a new book about the city. Emily Noble’s Disgrace is her third novel.

Michael Pedersen Chair

Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author, the Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Makar (Poet Laureate). He’s published three acclaimed collections of poetry, his most recent, The Cat Prince & Other Poems, won Best Poetry 2023 at the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards. His prose debut, Boy Friends, was published by Faber & Faber in 2022 to rave reviews and was a Sunday Times Critics Choice. Pedersen has been shortlisted for the Forward Prizes Poetry and the Saltire Scottish National Book Awards and has won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. His work has attracted praise from the likes of Stephen Fry, Kae Tempest, Irvine Welsh, Shirley Manson, Maggie Smith, Nicola Sturgeon, Jackie Kay and many more. He also co-founded the prize-winning literary collective Neu! Reekie!.