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Alejandra Andrade

Alejandra lives in Mérida, Yucatán, México with her husband and eight-year-old son. She’s a music lover, a geek at heart, and a fan of all things Christopher Nolan, Star Wars, LOTR, GOT, et cetera.

Moonstruck at Midnight is her debut novel and book one of the Moonstruck Series which is now complete. You can find her on social media on Facebook, Tiktok, and Instagram as @alejandra__andrade long as her 30-minute social media app limit hasn’t elapsed.

Callie Browning

Callie Browning is an award-winning Barbadian author whose books have been featured by Oprah Magazine, Yahoo, Hearst LatinX, the Barbara Bush Houston Literary Foundation, The Jamaica Gleaner and many others. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @bajancallie to get the latest on new books, her travel adventures and cooking inspo.

Celeste Mohammed

Celeste Mohammed is a Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer and the author of “Pleasantview” which is published in the USA (Ig, 2021), UK (Jacaranda, 2021) and West Africa (Ouida, 2022). Pleasantview won the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction, the 2022 Caribbean Readers Award (Fiction), and was a finalist for the 2022 UK Society of Authors McKitterick Prize for Fiction.

Celeste holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her short stories have won numerous awards including a 2018 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize, 2019 Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction, and the 2017 John D. Gardner Memorial Prize for Fiction. 

 

In 2024, Celeste was  shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and also made her non-fiction debut with "A Different Energy: Women in Caribbean Oil & Gas".

Jonathan Escoffery

Jonathan Escoffery is the author of the linked story collection, If I Survive You, a New York Times and Booklist Editor’s Choice, an IndieNext Pick, and an International Bestseller. If I Survive You was nominated for more than a dozen prizes and awards internationally, including the National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, among others. If I Survive You received American Short Fiction’s 2023 Constellation Award for a Story Collection and was named Miami New Times’ 2023 Best Book by a Local Author. It was named a ‘best’ book of 2022 by NPR, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, People, TIME, Oprah Daily, L.A. Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Vox, Kirkus, BookPage, Real Simple, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. 

 

In 2023, Jonathan was named among the 36 Forces Shaping the Cultural Conversation by Harper’s Bazaar. He was a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. His story “Under the Ackee Tree” won The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction and was among the trio that won the Paris Review the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction from the American Society of Magazine Editors. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Observer, The Paris Review, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, Zyzzyva, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.

Kennedy Ryan

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Kennedy Ryan writes for women from all walks of life, empowering them and placing them firmly at the center of each story and in charge of their own destinies. Kennedy and her writings have been featured in NPR, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, Glamour, Cosmo, Ebony, TIME, and many others. The audio edition of her novel Reel received the prestigious Audie® Award, and her Skyland series is currently in development for television at Peacock. 

 

The co-founder of LIFT 4 Autism, an annual charitable book auction, Kennedy has a passion for raising Autism awareness. Dubbed “Queen of Hugs” by her readers, she is a wife to her “lifetime lover,” and mother to an extraordinary son. 

Mateo Askaripour

MATEO ASKARIPOUR’s work aims to empower people of color to seize opportunities for advancement, no matter the obstacle. He was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 rising stars to make waves in 2021” and reps the Rhode Island Writers Colony to the fullest. 

 

His debut novel BLACK BUCK was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Read With Jenna Today Show book club pick. Now with the release of his sophmore release THIS GREAT HEMISPHERE, Askaripour has received high praise on this page turning dystopian fiction.

 

He lives in Brooklyn. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter at @AskMateo.

Roland Watson-Grant

Roland Watson-Grant’s first novel Sketcher was published by Alma Books (UK) in 2013 to good reviews from The Times London, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Spectator, GQ Magazine and others. Shortlisted for an Amazon Rising Star Award the novel has since been translated into Turkish and Spanish. 

 

The recipient of a Musgrave Award for Literature from the Institute of Jamaica, Roland’s non-fiction essay “I Know I Owe the Obeahman” has been archived by the Smithsonian Libraries.

 

In 2021, Roland won The Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region with his story, “The Disappearance of Mumma Dell”. which was also shortlisted for the ALCS Tom-Gallon Award 2022 in the UK.  Roland was longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Prize and the London Library Prize that same year. His short stories appear in Granta, Preelit Caribbean Magazine (Jamaica) and Doek Literary Magazine (Namibia)

 

Roland is represented by David Godwin and Associates and is working on his third novel

Yvonne Bailey-Smith

Yvonne Bailey-Smith was born in St Elizabeth, Jamaica.  She arrived in London as a teenager, where she joined her parents and younger siblings. 

 

Yvonne’s debut novel, The Day I Fell Off My Island, was published in June 2021.  As an immigrant child herself, Yvonne has always had a deep interest in the unheard voices of migrant children.  Yvonne is also hugely proud to be one of the contributors to the mighty anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Dr Margaret Busby. Yvonne is a qualified psychotherapist and alongside her writing, she continues to work within the National Health Service one day a week.  Yvonne also maintains a small private practice.

 

TDIFOMI was shortlisted for The Author’s Club Best First Novel Award, The Paul Torday Award, The Society of Authors Award and The Diverse Book Award.  

 

Yvonne is mother to three, Writer Zadie Smith; Actor, writer, Stand-up Comedian & rapper Ben Bailey Smith aka Docbrown; lyricist, actor, playwright, rapper and personal coach Luke Smith aka LucSkyz. Yvonne is also proud grandmother to four. 

 

 

Yvonne is currently working on a sequel to TDIFOMI - The Freedom of Birds. She is also working on a book of short stories

2024 Featured Authors

2025 Featured Authors to be announced soon!

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