Malika Booker

Malika Booker (born 1970) is a British writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist, who is "a pioneer of the present spoken word movement" in the UK. Her writing spans different genres of storytelling, including poetry, theatre, monologue, installation and education, and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Organizations for which she has worked include Arts Council England, the BBC, British Council, Wellcome Trust, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Arvon, and Hampton Court Palace. and returned to the UK aged 13, with her parents.

Booker began writing and performing poetry while studying a bachelors degree in anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She was mentored by Kwame Dawes, W. N. Herbert and Mimi Khalvati. which also included Nick Makoha. She took part in The Complete Works mentoring programme. Her first collection of poetry, Pepper Seed, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for best first full collection published in the UK and Ireland. Booker was the inaugural Poet In Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Booker's poem "Nine Nights", first published in The Poetry Review in autumn 2016, was shortlisted for Best Single Poem in the 2017 Forward Prize.

In 2019, Booker served as Chair of Judges for the international Manchester Poetry Prize.

Booker works as a Creative Writing lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.

In 2020, Booker won the Forward Prize for "Best Single Poem – Written" for "The Little Miracles", published in Magma. The poem is about caring for her mother in the aftermath of a stroke. The poem is about the ritual of a drink being poured in honour of the dead at funerals.

Selected works

1998: Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry. Ed. Karen McCarthy (The Women's Press) 2000: IC3: The Penguin Anthology of New Black Writing. Eds Courttia Newland and Kadija Sesay (Penguin) 2004: KIN: Commemorative Tour Anthology (Renaissance One) 2004: The Way We See It, The Way It Is (Lynk Reach) 2007: Breadfruit (flipped eye publishing). 2010: Ten New Poets (Bloodaxe) 2012: Hidden Gems Volume Two: Contemporary Black British Plays. Ed. Deirdre Osborne (Oberon Books). 2013: Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press), 2017: Penguin Modern Poets 3: Your Family, Your Body by Malika Booker, Sharon Olds, Warsan Shire (Penguin). 2019: New Daughters of Africa: An international anthology of writing by women of African descent. Ed. Margaret Busby (London:Myriad Editions).