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Ollie was just about to jump when he heard footsteps walking towards him across the stone bridge. Standing frozen on the wall, he never considered anyone approaching at this time of night. Ollie never moved and kept his eyes on the fast flowing water below while he waited for the person to pass.

Gita Ralleigh completed her MA in creative writing at Birkbeck in 2015 and has had short stories published by Wasafiri, Bellevue Literary Review, Fox Spirit, the Word Factory and Freight (February 2017).

Ismail Kadare’s novel opens with the backdrop of a bustling city square in Constantinople, in the heart of the Ottoman Empire. There is an ancient stone wall in the square, into which a cavity has been carved, and in this cavity, on a dish of honey and salt, sits a human head.

Cliff Chen is a Trinidadian-born writer. He has published several short stories and was winner of the Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Life Writing (2013) and also shortlisted for fiction category that same year.

Read this short story by Ali May, in which a young couple in Tehran, Nima and Rita, are planning their immigration to Canada when they are faced with a sudden medical crisis.   

Jaki McCarrick is an award-winning writer of plays, poetry and fiction.

Kaitz Israeli (Israeli Summer) -was the name of the movie marathon playing on yes.vod that summer The trailer played     constant nostalgic music droning over images of young, dark haired actresses.

Irenosen Okojie is a writer and Arts Project Manager. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask award. Her work has been featured in The Observer, The Guardian, the BBC and the Huffington Post amongst other publications. Her short stories have been published internationally.

Catharine Mee grew up in Birkenhead and now lives in Durham. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and a PhD in French and Italian literature. Her stories have been published in Wasafiri, The Salt Anthology of New Writing 2013, Unthology and Prole, as well as online.

The legacy of Kathleen Collins - Civil Rights Movement activist, pioneering film-maker, talented writer - is only coming to light in recent years.

1. IT DIDN’T SEEM TO MATTER THAT THE FIRST GIRL WENT MISSING WHILE HE WAS STILL AT SEA.

Riley stepped outside the shebeen. Steam was coming off her body. She pulled the grey rabbit-skin jacket around her. Her brown face was bloodless, leeched by the airless underground club. Five o’clock in the morning and she’d had enough of the dub and skanking.

Richard Scott was born in London in 1981. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies including Poetry Review, Poetry London, Swimmers, The Poetry of Sex (Penguin) and Butt Magazine.

Buchi Emecheta was a phenomenon, as an immigrant, a writer and a black single-mother surviving in the hostile conditions of London in the 60s and onwards.

Jane Ryan co-won the Wasafiri New Writing Fiction Prize in 2010. She is currently working with secondary schools who have adopted her recently launched teen spy thriller series Missing Dad 1: Wanted (Troubador) for use with library reading groups. Book 2:

Abeer Y. Hoque is a Nigerian born Bangladeshi American writer and photographer. She likes graffiti, sticky toffee pudding, and the end of the current US administration. It can’t come soon enough.

Uschi Gatward’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Best British Short Stories 2015 (Salt), Flamingo Land & Other Stories (ed.

There was an old gardener in my village in Italy, about twenty-five years ago, who after his wife’s death, decided to go around wearing her necklaces and brooches.

Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné is a poet and visual artist from Trinidad and Tobago. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Caribbean Writer, Small Axe Salon, Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, The Missing Slate, Room, and Dirtcakes Poetry.

Asylum and Refuge Part One … Militarising Against Refugees … Bidisha … I began doing outreach work with refugees and asylum seekers three and a half years ago, before what we now refer to as the refugee crisis, the greatest humanitarian emergency of the current era.

Clifton Gachagua is the winner of the inaugural Sillerman Prize for African Poetry, 2013, awarded by the African Poetry Book Fund.

Maaza Mengiste is a Fulbright Scholar and the award-winning author of Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, selected by the Guardian as one of the ten best contemporary African books.

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor was born in Nairobi, Kenya and educated at the Kenyatta University, the University of Reading and the University of Queensland.