The Portobello Bookshop's 5th Birthday Party

T L Huchu Chair

T.L. Huchu’s work has appeared in ‘Lightspeed’, ‘Interzone’, ‘Analog Science Fiction & Fact’, ‘The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021’, ‘Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’, ‘Mystery Weekly’, ‘The Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016’, and elsewhere. He is the winner of an Alex Award (2022), the Children’s Africana Book Award (2021), a Nommo Award for African SFF (2022, 2017), and has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize (2014) and the Grand prix de l’Imaginaire (2019). “The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle”, the third instalment in his Edinburgh Nights fantasy series, was published in July 2023. Find him @TendaiHuchu

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 Glasgow-based writer and editor, originally from South Yorkshire. Her debut novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society 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 her first nonfiction book, Electric Dreams: On Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism, was published in March 2024 as part of 404 Ink’s Inklings series.

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, scribbler, stitcher. He’s produced two acclaimed collections of poetry (Polygon Books) with a poetic prose debut, Boy Friends, published by Faber & Faber in July 2022. He won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, the John Mather’s Trust Rising Star of Literature Award, and was a finalist for the 2018 ‘Writer of the Year’ at The Herald Scottish Culture Awards. Pedersen also co-founded the literary collective Neu! Reekie!, and has 15 Christmas Jumpers: responsibly sourced and worn shamelessly from mid-October. His new collection, The Cat Prince & Other Poems, will be published in July 2023.