We are delighted to welcome the poet, author and public speaker Nadine Aisha Jassat to speak about her wide-ranging and impactful storytelling career. Her poetry collection, ‘Let Me Tell You This’ has been described as ‘beautifully written, immense and full of passion’ (Nikita Gill) and poems from it feature on the Scottish secondary school curriculum. Her award-nominated children’s stories are ‘charismatic’ and ‘enchanting’ (The Guardian), and 'truly mak[ing] the world a better place’ (Sophie Anderson). Jassat knows what it is like to be many things at once: she lives in Scotland and grew up in the North of England with a Yorkshire mum and Zimbabwean dad. She is of mixed heritage; a heritage which can only be told in stories. Our chair, Emma Wild-Wood, will be asking her about these amazing stories, the things that inspire her work, and the many ways in which her writing brings people together. This event is sponsored by the Scottish Book Trust’s Live Literature fund.
Nadine Aisha Jassat
Nadine Aisha Jassat is the author of the acclaimed poetry collection ‘Let Me Tell You This’ and three middle-grade mysteries in verse: ‘The Stories Grandma Forgot (And How I Found Them)’, the Carnegie-nominated ‘The Hidden Story of Estie Noor’, and ‘The House At The Edge of The World’. She has taught and performed internationally, including BBC Scotland’s The Big Scottish Book Club and Authors Live, and features in popular anthologies such as Picador’s ‘It’s Not About the Burqa’ (Shortlisted for Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year), Polygon’s ‘The People’s City’, and Bloodaxe's ‘Staying Human’. Her work has drawn significant acclaim, with her writing for adults shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, a Herald Scottish Culture Award for Outstanding Literature, and winning a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Her writing for children has been longlisted for a UKLA Book Award and the Jhalak Prize, and shortlisted for an Alexandra Palace Book Award and a James Reckitt Hull Book Award.
www.nadineaishaj.com
Chair: Emma Wild-Wood
Emma Wild-Wood is Professor of African Religions and World Christianity in the School of Divinity. She’s interested in biographical methods as a way of exploring social history, as in in her book ‘The Mission of Apolo Kivebulaya: Religious Encounter & Social Change in the Great Lakes c.1865-1935’ (2020). She also enjoys reading novels and poetry from the African and diasporic authors.
Venue information
In line with fire safety regulations attendees using a wheelchair must be able to self-transfer to an evac chair in order to safely evacuate the building.
This venue is fully accessible however, if you require disabled access, please email divinity.news@ed.ac.uk so that we can ensure we accommodate this.
