Keynote Speakers 2023

We are delighted to announce that our keynote speakers this year are Maura Dooley & Blake Morrison discussing The Future of Education (Friday 10 March, 10.15 - 11.15am) and Patrice Lawrence sharing insights into Living as a Writer (Friday 10 March, 7 - 8pm).

Maura Dooley

Maura Dooley’s (with Elhum Shakerifar) translations of verse by the Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman, Negative of a Group Photograph (Bloodaxe) received a PEN award and was shortlisted for the Warwick Women in Translation Prize. Her own last published collection was The Silvering (Bloodaxe) and a new collection, Five Fifty-Five (Bloodaxe), will come out in Spring 2023. She has been short-listed three times for the TSEliot Award and twice for the Forward Single Poem Award. She directs the MA Creative and Life Writing programme at Goldsmiths, University of London and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Blake Morrison

Blake Morrison was born in Yorkshire and was formerly literary editor of the Observer and the Independent on Sunday. He has a huge number of publications including two bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me; a children’s book, The Yellow House; poetry collections Dark Glasses, The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper, Discoverie of Witches, This Poem and Shingle Street; and four novels, including The Last Weekend and The Executor. He has won various awards, including the Eric Gregory, EM Forster and JR Ackerley prizes. His latest memoir, Two Sisters, comes out in 2023 along with two poetry pamphlets. He has been professor of creative and life writing at Goldsmiths University since 2003.

Patrice Lawrence

Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer. Her debut YA novel, Orangeboy, won the Bookseller YA Prize and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children's Fiction and was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award. Her subsequent novels have been much acclaimed and frequent visitors to prize lists including the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize 2021 and the YA Book Prize 2021. Patrice Lawrence was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2021 and she is an Ambassador for First Story, England’s leading creative writing charity for young people.