Speaker

Nayomi Apsara

Nayomi Apsara is a writer, director, poet, and curator. In 2021, she made her entry into the literary world with her debut poetry collection titled Throw Me Mountains. Nayomi was a panellist at the New Ink Literary Forum in 2022. 

 As a filmmaker, Nayomi’s debut short film, The Tea is Cold (2022), was recognized at the Busan International Short Film Festival, where it had its Asian premiere, and at the Jaffna International Cinema Festival. Nayomi became a fellow of the International Film Business Academy in 2023 at Busan Asian Film School, South Korea. She was also a fellow at Curatorial Intensive South Asia in 2018, at Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi, India.

 In addition to her achievements in the arts, Nayomi has expertise in commercial writing and advertising. She previously spent over 15 years in the corporate sector in Sri Lanka and overseas.

Top Titles

• Throw Me Mountains (2021)

Speaker

Mary Beard

Cambridge Classics Professor Mary Beard is known across the world. She has written numerous books including the prize-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, best-selling SPQR – A History of Ancient Rome and the highly-acclaimed Women & Power, all of which have been translated into many languages. Her most recent book, Twelve Caesars – Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern, looks at the representation in art and culture of the image of the Roman emperor.

Mary has presented several BBC TV series including Meet the Romans, Civilisations and The Shock of the Nude exposing the history of the naked body in Western art. Mary also writes a thought-provoking blog, A Don’s Life. For services to Classical scholarship, Mary was made a Dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2018 and is a trustee of the British Museum. Her new book, Emperor of Rome, explores one of the most extraordinary roles in history.

Top Titles

• SPQR – A History of Ancient Rome (2015)

• Women & Power: A Manifesto (2017)

• Emperor of Rome (2023)

Speaker

Jasbinder Bilan

Jasbinder is the Costa Award winning author of Asha and the Spirit Bird, Tamarind and the Star of Ishta and Aarti and the Blue Gods. In her writing she loves creating magical worlds inspired by her love of nature and wild places. Jasbinder was born on a farm close to the foothills of the Himalaya and now lives in a wooded valley near Bath with her husband, two teenage boys and dog Enzo. Her latest book, Xanthe and the Ruby Crown, is inspired by her hometown of Nottingham and brings magic to an everyday setting.

Top Titles

     Asha and the Spirit Bird (2019)

    Tamarind and the Star of Ishta (2020)

   Xanthe and the Ruby Crown (2023)

Speaker

Sam Bleakley

Sam is a geographer, travel writer, filmmaker, presenter and surf contest commentator. Born and raised in Cornwall, Sam has a particular interest in sustainable tourism with a lasting impact. Sam has BA and MA in Geography from Pembroke College, the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from Falmouth University (and the University of the Arts London) on travel writing and surf exploration in Haiti.

Sam’s work on cultural tourism and surfing often focuses on areas that are post-conflict or post-environmental disaster, where grassroots surf communities and small-scale tourism ventures provide a wider lens to understand sustainability, diversity, inclusivity, blue health, coastscapes, and surfing’s potential to inspire positive change.

He produces an adventure activist series called Brilliant Corners, documenting responsible tourism and the power of surfing for social good in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Sam also hosts the live broadcast for the World Surf League and International Surfing Association World Longboard Championships.

Top Titles

• Surfing Brilliant Corners (2010)

• The Longboard Travel Guide: A Guide to the World’s Best Longboarding Waves (2015)

• Mindful Thoughts for Surfers: Tuning in to the tides (2020)

Speaker

Nicholas Brookes

Nicholas Brookes is an author and journalist from South London. His first book, An Island’s Eleven: The Story of Sri Lankan Cricket, was named Cricket Book of the Year by Wisden, The MCC/Cricket Society and The Sunday Times Sports Book Awards. He has covered the sport for publications including The Cricket Monthly, The Nightwatchman, Wisden, CricBuzz and The Cricketer.

 Top Titles

• An Island’s Eleven: The Story of Sri Lankan Cricket (2022)

Chef

Emily Dobbs

Emily Dobbs is an acclaimed chef of ten years, having worked at The Dock Kitchen, Ducksoup, Petersham Nurseries, Spring and Italo restaurants in London, before becoming the head chef at Palm Hotel in Sri Lanka. In 2017, Dobbs set up the successful Sri Lankan-influenced street food stall Weligama – hailed by the Evening Standard as ‘utterly fantastic’ – which went on to become the title of her first cookbook. Her second publication, The Spice Box – a creative guide to using spices and tasting new worlds – is out now with Laurence King Publishing. Emily’s food is heavily inspired by Sri Lanka, yet led by British seasons and fresh local produce. She is currently the head chef at London’s Lorian Deli and lives in East London. 

Top Titles

• Weligama: Recipes from Sri Lanka (2017)

• The Spice Box: Taste New Worlds (2023)

Speaker

Tishani Doshi

Tishani Doshi publishes poetry, fiction and essays. For fifteen years she was the lead dancer of the Chandralekha company in Madras, and the body has been a central preoccupation in her work—a vehicle to explore gender, violence, sexuality and power, but also as an agent of renewal and transformation.

Since her debut, Countries of the Body, which won the Forward Prize for best first collection (2006), she has sought joineries between the lyric and the political. Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (2017) headlined the All About Women Festival at the Sydney Opera House and was shortlisted for a Ted Hughes Award. Her novels, The Pleasure Seekers (2010) and Small Days and Nights (2019), have been shortlisted for the Hindu Fiction Prize, Tata Fiction Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. A God at the Door, her 2021 poetry collection, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Top Titles

• Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (2017)

• Small Days and Nights (2019)

• A God at the Door (2021)

Speaker

Nizrana Farook

Nizrana Farook was born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the beautiful landscapes of her home country find their way into the stories she writes. Her first book, The Girl Who Stole an Elephant, was the UK’s biggest selling children’s debut of the year. Featuring a feisty girl-thief named Chaya and a loveable elephant, it was longlisted for the Blue Peter Award and the Jhalak Prize. Three more books followed, all set in a fictional Sri Lanka. Nizrana has a master’s degree in writing for young people and lives with her family in Hertfordshire, UK.

Top Titles

• The Girl Who Stole an Elephant (2020)

• The Boy Who Met a Whale (2021)

• The Boy Who Saved a Bear (2023)

Speaker

Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks is the author of many books and a frequent visitor to Sri Lanka, coming first in 1981 to play cricket with a team from the Guardian newspaper. His latest novel, The Seventh Son, is out in September 2023.

Other books include the French trilogy, a James Bond tribute called Devil May Care, Human Traces, Engleby and A Possible Life. He lives in London with his wife Veronica and their whippet.

Top Titles

• Birdsong (1993)

• Snow Country (2021)

• The Seventh Son (2023)

Speaker

Peter Frankopan

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he is Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research; he is also UNESCO Professor of Silk Roads Studies at King’s College, Cambridge. His book, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World was described ‘not just the most important history book in  years, but the most important in decades’ (Berliner Zeitung). It was named one of the Sunday Times Books of the Decade (2010-19). His next book, The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World was awarded the Carical Prize for Social Sciences in 2019. His most recent book is The Earth Transformed: An Untold History that looks at the past and present through the lens of the natural environment. ‘Humanity has transformed the Earth’ said the Financial Times; ‘Frankopan transforms our understanding of history.’

Top Titles

• The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015)

• The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World (2018)

• The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (2023)

Speaker

A.C. Grayling

C. Grayling CBE MA DPhil (Oxon) FRSA FRSL is the Founder and Principal of New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, and its Professor of Philosophy. He is also a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He is the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas, and essays.

He has contributed as a columnist to leading newspapers in the UK, US and Australia, and to BBC radio and the World Service, for which he did the annual Exchanges at the Frontier series. He has also often appeared on television. A. C. Grayling has twice been a judge on the Booker Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Vice President of Humanists UK, Patron of the Defence Humanists, Honorary Associate of the Secular Society, and a Patron of Dignity in Dying.

Top Titles

• The God Argument (2013)

• The Frontiers of Knowledge (2021)

• Philosophy and Life (2023)

Chef

Karan Gokani

Karan grew up in Mumbai and moved to England in 2005 to study law at the University of Cambridge. Even as a practising solicitor, Karan’s passion for food and hospitality never faded. In 2012, he left his legal career at a city law firm, travelling across India and Sri Lanka to immerse himself in the food and culture of both countries. The Sethi siblings and Karan opened Hoppers, a Sri Lankan and South Indian restaurant in Soho in 2015, followed by sites in Marylebone and King’s Cross.

Karan has written travel features and recipes on Sri Lanka and southern India for major national and international publications including The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, National Geographic and Conde Nast Traveller. His hotly anticipated debut cookbook was released in Autumn 2022, rapidly topping bestseller lists and telling a personal story of the inspiration behind Hoppers and the people and places that shaped it. 

Top Titles

• Hoppers (2022) 

Speaker

Guy Gunaratne

Guy Gunaratne is a novelist, playwright and video artist. Their first novel In Our Mad and Furious City won the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize in the UK and the Authors Club Award. It was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and longlisted for the Booker Prize, as well as the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

They served as Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and on literary prize committees including the Goldsmiths Prize (2019) and the Rathbones Folio Prize (2023).

Top Titles

• In Our Mad and Furious City (2018)

• Mister, Mister (2023)

Speaker

Romesh Gunesekera

Romesh Gunesekera was born in Sri Lanka in 1954, and now lives in London. His widely acclaimed first novel, Reef, was published in 1994 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as well as for the Guardian Fiction Prize. Romesh Gunesekera is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has also received a National Honour in Sri Lanka.

He has been a judge for literary prizes including the Caine Prize for African Writing, the David Cohen Literature Prize, the Forward Prize for Poetry and the Granta 2013 list of the Best of Young British Novelists. In 2015, he was the Chair of Judges for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He has been a Guest Director at the Cheltenham Festival, an Associate Tutor at Goldsmiths College and on the Board of the Arvon Foundation for writing. For four years, he was on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature.

 Top Titles

• Reef (1994)

• Noontide Toll (2014)

• Suncatcher (2019)

Speaker

Amanthi Harris

Amanthi Harris grew up in Colombo, Sri Lanka and in London, UK. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and has degrees in Law and Chemistry from Bristol University. Her novel Beautiful Place was published by Salt Publishing (UK) and Pan Macmillan India. Lantern Evening, a novella, won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 and was published by Gatehouse Press. Her short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies including Best British Short Stories 2020 and broadcast on BBC Radio4. Her most recent short story for radio, Crinkum Crankum was broadcast in 2023 and is available to listen to online at the BBC website. She currently lives in the mountains of southern Spain.

Top Titles

• Lantern Evening (2016)
  

• Beautiful Place (2019)

Speaker

Will Harris

Will Harris is a London-based writer. He is the author of the poetry books RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023), both published by Granta in the UK and by Wesleyan University Press in the US. He has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

He helps facilitate the Southbank New Poets Collective with Vanessa Kisuule, and co-translated Habib Tengour’s Consolatio with Delaina Haslam in 2022. He currently works in extra-care homes and is a Visiting Poetry Fellow at UEA working towards a community-led archive of poets’ work.

Top Titles

• Rendang (2020)

• Brother Poem (2023)

Speaker

Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Kiran Millwood Hargrave (FRSL) is an internationally bestselling, award winning novelist for children and adults. Her children’s books include The Girl of Ink & Stars, Julia and the Shark, and most recently the first in her major new The Geomancer Trilogy, In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen. Her fiction for adults, The Mercies and The Dance Tree, have won international accolades such as the Prix Rive Gauche, a Betty Trask Award and an NYT Notable Book. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages, and optioned for stage and screen. She lives in Oxford with her husband, artist Tom de Freston, their daughter, and two cats.

Top Titles

• The Girl of Ink & Stars (2016)

• The Mercies (2022)

• In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen (2023)

Speaker

Afua Hirsch

Afua Hirsch is an award-winning writer, journalist, former barrister and filmmaker, known for storytelling on culture, identity and social justice. She presents flagship BBC documentary series Africa Rising, Enslaved – a 6-part series about the transatlantic slave trade with Samuel L Jackson – and podcasts through Born in Me Productions, which she founded.

Afua’s book Decolonising My Body blends memoir and narrative non-fiction to examine beauty, rituals and ancestry as an approach to radical justice. Her previous books include the bestselling Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging (2018), winner of the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize, Equal To Everything (2019), a bestselling book about the UK Supreme Court, and Empire: Look Again (2021). Afua is a professor of Journalism at the University of Southern California, a long-time journalist and contributor to publications including The Guardian Newspaper, The New York Times, American and British Vogue, where she is also an associate editor.

Top Titles

• Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging (2018)

• Equal To Everything: Judge Brend and the Supreme Court (2019)

• Decolonising My Body (2023)

Speaker

Anthony Horowitz

Anthony is a born polymath; juggling writing books, TV series, films, plays and journalism. Anthony has written over 50 books including the bestselling teen spy series Alex Rider, which is estimated to have sold 21 million copies worldwide and has been adapted into a hugely successful television series.

He is also an acclaimed writer for adults. He was commissioned to write two new Sherlock Holmes novels, and three continuation novels for James Bond. Anthony’s award-winning novel Magpie Murders was serialised on BritBox and televised on the BBC in 2023. The sequel, Moonflower Murders, began filming in 2023. His new series, featuring Detective Hawthorne and a sidekick called Anthony Horowitz, includes five books so far.

Anthony is responsible for creating some of the UK’s most beloved television series including Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War, the Winner of the Lew Grade Audience award for BAFTA. Anthony was awarded a CBE in 2022 for his services to literature.

Top Titles

• With a Mind to Kill (2022 – final James Bond novel) 
• Nightshade: Revenge (2023 – the latest in the Alex Rider series) 
• Close to Death (2023 – the latest in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series)

Speaker

Ameena Hussein

Ameena Hussein is a Sri Lankan author and co-founder of the Perera-Hussein Publishing House. Her non-fiction book Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics: Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka won the State Literary Prize for Humanities, 2020 and was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize. Her novel The Moon in the Water was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Award and the Dublin IMPAC. She has also written two award-winning collections of short stories, Fifteen and Zillij, as well as three children’s books. Ameena was one of the judges for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

Top Titles

• The Moon in the Water (2009)

• Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics: Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka (2020)

Speaker

Amanda Jayatissa

Amanda Jayatissa loves to read disturbing books with shocking plot twists, so it seemed logical to her that she should attempt to write disturbing books with shocking plot twists. When she isn’t recovering from a self-induced book hangover, she works tirelessly as the chief taste tester at the cookie shop she co-owns.

She grew up in Sri Lanka and has lived in the California bay area and British countryside, before relocating back to her sunny island, where she lives with her husband and two Tasmanian-devil-reincarnate huskies.

My Sweet Girl is her first thriller, and her second, titled You’re Invited, was published in 2022. Her third novel, Island Witch, is inspired by Sri Lankan folklore and will be published in February 2024.

 Top Titles

• My Sweet Girl (2021)

• You’re Invited (2022)

• Island Witch (2024)

Speaker

Balli Jaswal

Balli Kaur Jaswal is the author of five novels, including the internationally bestselling Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows (2017). She was named a Best Young Australian Novelist by the Sydney Morning Herald and shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. Jaswal’s short stories and essays have appeared in the UK Sunday Express, Cosmopolitan Magazine, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, and Best Australian Short Stories. A former writing fellow at the University of East Anglia, she has taught creative writing at Yale-NUS College and Nanyang Technological University, where she completed her Ph.D. in South Asian diaspora writing.

Top Titles

• Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows (2017)

• The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters (2019)

• Now You See Us (2023)

Speaker

Shehan Karunatilaka

Shehan Karunatilaka emerged on to the global literary stage in 2011, when he won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSL and Gratiaen Prize for his debut novel, Chinaman. The book was declared the second-best cricket book of all time by Wisden.

Born in  Galle, Sri Lanka, in 1975, Karunatilaka grew up in Colombo, studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam and Singapore. He currently lives in Sri Lanka. His songs, scripts and stories have been published in Rolling Stone, GQ and National Geographic. He has worked as an advertising copywriter and played guitar in a band called Independent Square.

His second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, was announced as the winner of the Booker Prize 2022 in London.

Top Titles

• Chinaman (2010)

• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022)

• The Birth Lottery & Other Surprises (2022)

Speaker

Radha Kumar

Radha Kumar is a former Director General of the Delhi Policy Group and a specialist on ethnic conflicts, peace and security. Previously Director of the Mandela Centre for Peace at Jamia Millia Islamia University, she developed the first MA in Peace and Conflict Studies in India. Dr Kumar has held a number of senior positions at institutions including Columbia University, the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly in Prague and the UN, where she served as chair of the United Nations University Council.

She is currently vice-chair for SIPRI and co-chair of the Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir. Her book, Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir (2018) was named “the one book to read on Kashmir” by the Telegraph India. A frequent op-ed contributor to the Hindu and the Indian Express, she has been honoured with fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation and the SSRC in New York, as well as the Institute for Development Studies in Bangalore.

Top Titles

• Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir (2018)

• A Gender Atlas of India (with Karthika Sudhir and Marcel Korff, Sage: 2018)

• The Republic Relearned: A Brief History of Indian Democracy in Eight Chapters (2024)

Speaker

Christina Lamb

Chief Foreign Correspondent at The Sunday Times, Christina Lamb is a decorated journalist. Her honours included the Prix Bayeux, Europe’s foremost prize for war correspondents, Amnesty International’s Outstanding Impact Award, and the prestigious Outstanding Contribution to Journalism Award, given by the Society of Editors in 2022.

She is the author of ten books, including the bestselling I am Malala, co-written with Malala Yousafzai, and The Girl from Aleppo, with Nujeen Mustafa. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, about sexual violence in conflict, won the first Pilecki Institute award for war reporting. It was described by Antony Beevor as ‘the most powerful book’ he had ever read.

She is a Global Champion for UN Education Cannot Wait, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an Honorary Fellow of University College Oxford, an International Board member of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, an Associate of the Imperial War Museum, and was made an OBE by the Queen in 2013.

Top Titles

• The Girl from Aleppo with Nujeen Mustafa (2016)

• Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: What War Does to Women (2020)

• The Prince Rupert Hotel for the Homeless (2022)

Chef

Jeremy Lee

Jeremy Lee joined the Hart brothers at Soho’s Quo Vadis in early 2012, becoming Chef Proprietor of the restaurant. Part of the resurgence of modern British cooking, he had previously manned the stoves of Blueprint Café in the Design Museum in London. Originally from Dundee, Scotland, Jeremy comes from a family where home cooking of a high order was daily fare. His parents and grandmother taught him the mysteries of finding good produce through good shopping. Jeremy applies this to the menus at Quo Vadis, where the cooking is bright, fresh and quintessentially British in a manner most modern. 

In 2012, Jeremy and Quo Vadis won the Catey for Best Restaurant Menu of the Year; in 2013 they won the Tatler Award for Best Kitchen. Jeremy was listed in The Evening Standard’s ‘Progress 1000: London’s most influential people – Tastemakers: Eat & Drink’ in 2018. He writes for numerous newspapers and has appeared on television. 

Top Titles

• Cooking: Simply and Well for One or Many (2022)

Speaker

Andrew Lownie

Andrew Lownie was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was Dunster History Prizeman and President of the Union, before taking his Masters and doctorate at Edinburgh University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he later returned to Cambridge as a visiting fellow at Churchill College.

He has been a bookseller, publisher and journalist, writing for the Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Spectator and Guardian, and since 1988 has run his own literary agency specialising in history and biography. He is President of the Biographers Club, sits on the board of Biographers International Organisation and is a Trustee of the Campaign for Freedom of Information.

His books include a prize-winning biography of the spy Guy Burgess and the top-ten Sunday Times bestsellers The Mountbattens and Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. His next book is on the Duke & Duchess of York.

Top Titles

• Stalin’s Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring (2016)

• The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves (2019)

• Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (2021)

Speaker

Isurinie Anuradha Mallawaarachchi

Isurinie Anuradha Mallawaarachchi is a lecturer, attorney-at-law and bilingual poet. Isurinie’s work touches on love, heartbreak, sex and self exploration. Her first collection of poetry, Flowers Teach Me to Let Go, was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize in 2023.

Top Titles

• Flowers Teach Me to Let Go (2022)

Speaker

Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith CBE was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh before he became a full-time author. His various series of books have been translated into over 46 languages and have sold more than 30 million copies across the world. These include The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, set in Botswana, and the 44 Scotland Street and Isabel Dalhousie novels, both set in Edinburgh. Alexander is the co-founder of an amateur orchestra called ‘The Really Terrible Orchestra’, in which he plays the bassoon.

Top Titles

• A song of Comfortable Chairs (2022) – the latest in the The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series

• The Sweet Remnants of Summer (2022) – the latest in the Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries series

• The Enigma of Garlic (2023) – the latest in the 44 Scotland Street series

Speaker

Moni Mohsin

Moni Mohsin was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan. Now based in London, she is a freelance journalist and author of three novels, the prize winning The End of Innocence, Tender Hooks and The Impeccable Integrity of Ruby R. Her bestselling collection of satirical columns, The Diary of a Social Butterfly, The Return of the Butterfly and Between You, Me and the Four Walls, are based on her long running column for The Friday Times.

Top Titles

• The Diary of a Social Butterfly (2008)

• The Impeccable Integrity of Ruby R. (2020)

• Between You, Me and the Four Walls (2023)

Speaker

Nujeen Mustafa

Nujeen Mustafa (Arabic: نوجين مصطفى Nūjjayn Muṣṭafā; also transliterated Noujain Mustaffa) is a Kurdish Syrian refugee and activist with cerebral palsy. She was raised in Aleppo, Syria, and gained attention after travelling 3,500 miles (5,600 km) by wheelchair, fleeing conflict in the Syrian Civil War, before arriving and resettling in Germany. She was listed as one of the BBC’s 100 Women in 2018, and her story was featured on the television show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. In 2019 she became the first disabled person to brief the United Nations Security Council, and was the recipient of the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism from Human Rights Watch.

Top Titles

The Girl from Aleppo with Christina Lamb (2016)

Speaker

Janice Pariat

Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories and Seahorse: A Novel. She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013. Her bestselling novella The Nine Chambered-Heart was published in ten languages including Italian, Spanish, French, and German.

She studied English Literature at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and History of Art at SOAS, London. Her work—including art reviews, book reviews, fiction and poetry—has featured in a wide selection of national publications. In 2014, she was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, and a Writer in Residence at the TOJI Residency in South Korea in 2019.

Her novel Everything the Light Touches won the AutHer Award for Best Fiction in 2023, and was listed in The New Yorker’s “Best Books of 2022”. She lives between Shillong and New Delhi with a cat of many names.

Top Titles

• Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories (2012)

• The Nine Chambered-Heart (2017)

• Everything the Light Touches (2022)

Speaker

DBC Pierre

DBC Pierre was born in 1961 in Reynella, Australia. He was brought up in Mexico and the UK, and now lives in Ireland. He previously worked as a designer and an internationally published cartoonist, but  now devotes himself to writing. His debut novel, Vernon God Little (2003) – a dark satire set in the aftermath of a Texas high school massacre – was the winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

His second novel, Ludmila’s Broken English, was published in 2006. He has since published Lights Out in Wonderland (2010); Breakfast with the Borgias (2014); as well as Petit Mal (2013), a selection of short fiction and non-fiction; and Release the Bats (2016), which explores the art and process of storytelling, amongst other novels.

 Top Titles

• Vernon God Little (2003)

• Meanwhile in Dopamine City (2020)

• Big Snake Little Snake: An Inquiry into Risk (2022)

Speaker

Vidura Bandara Rajapaksa

Vidura BR is a Sri Lankan comedian, writer, and director based in London, via Malaysia and Berlin. His dead-pan style puts audiences at ease while challenging conventional wisdom with a unique tone that is often irreverent, at times poignant, and always hysterical.

His self directed, produced, written, and performed debut show Monsoon Season garnered much online attention and critical acclaim, and was selected for syndication on Amazon Prime Video following its initial release. He is currently touring his new hour show French Kiss Tunnel across multiple countries through 2024.

Chef

Cynthia Shanmugalingam

Cynthia Shanmugalingam is a British-Sri Lankan Tamil cook who was born in England, visiting Sri Lanka in her childhood holidays and eating dishes adapted by her immigrant family at home. She is the author of Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka (Bloomsbury UK, 2022), which won the Fortnum and Mason’s Best Debut Cookery Book 2023, was named as a best cookbook of the year by the New York Times, LA Times, Chrissy Teigen, and Bon Appetit. She is the chef-proprietor of the restaurant Rambutan, which opened in 2023 and was hailed as “dazzling” by the Financial Times, British Vogue and London’s Evening Standard. Her cooking has a special focus on Jaffna where her family comes from, and has been featured in The Guardian, the BBC, The Times and We Present.

Top Titles

• Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka (2022)

Speaker

Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne

Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne has broken internationally significant wildlife stories, including recognising Sri Lanka as the best place in the world for seeing blue whales, the site of the world’s largest recurring gathering of wild elephants and a key destination for leopard safaris. 

 Gehan’s efforts have made him a wildlife celebrity in Sri Lanka, with over 25 published books and 400 articles. He is amongst a handful of field naturalists to write and photograph internationally-published books and field guides spanning terrestrial mammals, marine mammals, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, wild flowers and trees. 

In the words of British wildlife presenter Bill Oddie, no single individual has done so much to raise the profile of a country for its wildlife. Gehan is the Chair of the London Bird Club and a Trustee of the British Ornithologists’ Club. Back in London after ten years in Sri Lanka, he continues to promote the island as one of the world’s best all-round wildlife destinations.

Top Titles

• Wild Sri Lanka (2013)

• A Photographic Field Guide to the Birds of Sri Lanka (2017)

• A Naturalist’s Guide to the Trees of Sri Lanka (2020)