Please join Poets & Players on Saturday 23 March 2024, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians.

You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the IABF on their website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Performers often bring along books and CDs to sell, please note we are only able to accept cash payments.

Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for multiple prizes, including the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. Bright Fear, Chan’s second book, was shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is currently shortlisted for the 2024 Writers’ Prize. In 2022, Chan co-edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems with Andrew McMillan. Chan is currently the 2023-24 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

Rachael Allen is the author of Kingdomland and God Complex, both published by Faber. She works as an editor and lecturer.

Katie O’Pray is currently a creative facilitator and Barbican Young Poet. They have been the winner of The ruth weiss Foundation’s Emerging Poet’s Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. Their work has also been associated with the Manchester Writing Competition and the Magma Poetry Competition, among others. Their debut collection ‘APRICOT’ was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2022.

Christopher Godhard is a classical guitarist, Royal Northern College of Music (bio to follow).