NIKOLA LASHLEY was born in South Manchester in the early 1970's. Her father taught his shy left-handed daughter how to hold a pencil and write her name, and surrounded her with books. From an early age, Nikola began a secret love affair with words. She left Manchester aged 17 to pursue a career in fashion and moved to London where a brush with homelessness almost left her destitute. After some years working in different jobs, with two small children to care for, Nikola returned to education. She was awarded a degree in Professional Broadcasting and News Journalism from Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. Her career began at ITN's Channel Five News, where she worked as a multi-skilled reporter. Nikola went on to join BBC as a freelance news journalist. Soon she was working for BBC Breakfast News, Liquid News, BBC LDN and World Business Report. In 2004, Nikola was promoted to senior broadcast journalist for BBC Network News based in Tunbridge Wells.
In 2005, Nikola moved with her two children to the island of Curacao in the Central Caribbean, where she worked freelance for BBC World Service as the Netherlands Antilles correspondent. She also worked as a newscaster on Curacao's premier radio station, 'Trosparadise'. Nikola also managed English language copywriting projects for a small portfolio of media clients. It is the remote island of Curacao and a dark family secret that leads Nikola to cross an ocean to escape life in East London and sets the scene for the book which she is currently writing – a promising memoir of an urban Shirley Valentine.
M. V. DIBOLL was a motorcycle courier in and around Bermondsey, London SE16 during the 1970s and edited the anarcho-punk fanzines No Real Reason and Toxic Graffity. He became interested in The Koran in the 1980s and contributed to The Crescent International, but eventually went into higher education as a mature student. In the early 1990's, Diboll studied at the American University in Cairo; returned to London; then received his PhD in 2001. He holds a First in Modern Languages, majoring in Arabic, and lectures/researches in Comparative Literature in the Middle East. He is married with a son.
His journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The Socialist Review, The Spectator, The Times, Tribune and has been anthologised, notably in The Rape of the Constitution? Keith Sutherland & Michael Beloff QC (eds.). An academic work Self, Exile and Imagination: Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet in its Various Egyptian Contexts was published in 2004. An expert in modern Islamic and Arabic thought, Diboll's opinions are often sourced by publications as diverse as The Guardian and The Sun.
Diboll's first novel, A Place In Paradise, is informed by the author's involvement with Islamic culture in London's East End, and subsequently by teaching asylum-seekers. It reaches into the extremist mind. Graphic, disturbing and at times very funny, A Place In Paradise is 'about the deadly attraction that political and religious fanaticism holds for inner-city wastrels ardent for some desperate glory, and the consequences that the violence of the fanatics has for the innocent, the marginalized, the exiled, and those just trying to get through their lives.' Edited manuscript (305pp).
CHARLIE CASELTON was born in England in 1961. From the age of six he was brought up in Malta, France and Switzerland and schooled abroad. He was the executive producer of the film 'Letter to Brezhnev' which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 1985 where it won the audience prize, and went on to achieve critical and commercial success around the world. Charlie (who lives in West London) has written drama scripts for TV and radio, and his novel Meanwhile Gardens which features a host of Notting Hill-based characters was serialised by myvillage/nottinghill across their network of 50 sites in 2002 and repeated in 2006. It offers an alternative view of the neighbourhood to that portrayed in novels like Rachel Johnson's Notting Hell. Meanwhile Gardens stars a cast of local characters headed by hero Ollie and his dog with attitude, Humdinger III, and a gorgeous, homeless young girl.
POLLY VERNON, EVENING STANDARD - Meanwhile Gardens is West London's first internet soap opera and at last count was attracting up to 5000 hits a week. It's been described as 'a Famous Five for adults', 'Tales of the City set in Portobello', and 'The Archers for W11' and it's got a cult fashion following — Maia Norman (Mrs Damien Hirst), Bill Amberg and Fiona Carenza (co-owner of the painfully cool clothing store Rellik) are all fans. Fully revised & edited manuscript (210pp).
Born in Nigeria in 1960, ONYEKACHI WAMBU arrived in the UK after the Biafran war. Educated in London and at the universities of Essex and Cambridge, he has worked as a journalist since 1983 and was Editor of the leading Black newspaper, The Voice, at the end of the 1980s. As a TV producer and director he has made documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. His two hour PBS documentary special screened across the US in 2001, 'Hopes on the Horizon: the Rise of the New Africa', received the Golden Dhow Award 2002 for Best Documentary. He is currently Information Officer for the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD), a charity established to expand and enhance the contributions Africans in the diaspora make to Africa's development.
Wambu's publications include Empire Windrush: Fifty Years of Writing About Black Britain (ed.). Under the Tree of Talking: Leadership for Change in Africa (ed.) confronts one of the most critical issues facing Africa today: leadership. In this collection of provocative and original essays, Onyekachi Wambu and 18 contributors reflect on the failure of leadership at all levels in large parts of the continent, and propose positive solutions to inspire a new generation of African leaders. Published in September 2007, by Counterpoint, the cultural relations Think Tank of the British Council. (Rights: WEL volume - hardback, paperback and anthology & electronic, The British Council.)
Born in St Louis, JAMIKA AJALON studied at the University of Missouri, then Chicago, before moving to London where she received an MA in Cultural Theory & Media from Goldsmiths. Her short stories have been anthologised in Kin (Serpent's Tail), Afrekete (Doubleday, NY) and Sappho Küsst die Welt (Querverlag). Her journalism has appeared in Black Book Review (NY), Outlines (Chicago), BFI Black Film Bulletin, Black Filmmaker, The Voice and Straight No Chaser. She has also created installation projects, notably Trans_narrative(s) for Forum Stadtpark & Graz (Austria).
Jamika's poetry has been published in the collections Bittersweet (Serpent's Tail), Modern Love (Renaissance 1) and Velocity (Black Spring Press). Jamika has compiled a first collection of poetry, Genetically Modified Soul. Fully edited manuscript (47pp).
As a performance poet, she has appeared with the Urban Poets, Tony Allen Band, The Shrine, in LIFT and numerous DJs. She has also appeared solo at London venues the Jazz Cafe, Fridge, Barbican, ICA, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Cargo. Jamika frequently tours France with dub group Zenzile, and lyricizes her poems on albums 'Zenzile Meets Jamika 5 + 1', 'Sound Patrol', 'Totem', 'Zenzile & Jamika Meet Cello 5 + 1' and 'Modus Vivendi'. Her first solo album, 'Helium Balloon Illusions', was released in France in March 2007. More info? See jamika.net
SAMARA HAIN was born in Mauritania and grew up within the French community of this former French colony. She could only get hold of interesting new music when visiting her family back in France. One summer, while scouring the only record shop in her grandparents' village, she discovered The Cure, and her love affair with Gothic music grew and grew. By the time she moved to Nice in the South of France she had fully embraced the Goth lifestyle.
In 2001 Samara packed her bags and moved to London. She appeared in Mortiis' 'Mental Maelstrom' video, Forevernever's 'As I Lie', Panic Cell's 'Fallen', Abgott's 'The Ninth Gate' and modelled for various clothing companies and magazines, including the front Cover of Terrorizer. She also appeared in 'Metal Hammer'. Samara writes for Alternative and Insomnia magazines and various web sites, as well as rockworld.tv. She is also a regular TV presenter-interviewer for Rockworld TV (channel 368) which premiered in 2006 as SKY TV's first ever late night alternative music show. More info? See lady lust
Samara has finished her first book, The Dark Wave, Goth Inside Out, which reads like a 'Beginner's Guide' to Goth, and includes exclusive interviews with musicians and behind the scenes movers and shakers.
Fully edited manuscript (113pp illus).
Singer and novelist, MOUNSI was born in Algeria and aged seven was sent to live with his father, a factory-worker, in the industrial Parisian suburb, Nanterre. In borstal he discovered the poetry of Francois Villon and turned to writing. He writes with a genuine insider's perspective and understanding, and brings to life the fate of delinquents surviving in a brutal, soulless universe. Although his mother tongues are Kabyle and Arabic, Mounsi writes in French, which he calls 'the language of the hold-up.'
His prize-winning novel The Demented Dance (La noce des fous) won the Inaugural 3:AM Good Sex Prize and was selected as a Time Out 'Book of the Week', as well as a string of awards in France. His other books include: La Cendre des Villes awarded the Lauréat de la Bourse du Centre National du Livre, Le Voyage des Ames awarded the Prix de l'Astrolabe-étonnants voyageurs, Territoire d'outre-ville and Les sauvageons expliqués aux fils des ministres. Dubbed the 'Boris Vian of the Inner City' by Le Nouvel Observateur, Mounsi is working on a new novel, La prophécie du serpent. More info? See mounsi.com
RUPERT BOGARDE worked in the film industry before heading off for France to renovate a twelfth century chapel in the Pyrenees which he ran with his first wife, Jacquie, as a holiday centre for young diabetics, until her disappearance in 1993 - the basis of his memoir Daybreak Into Darkness. 'Uncle Dirk liked Jacquie very much and he would be incredibly supportive in the dark years that lay ahead.'
Rupert returned to England to bring up his two children alone and worked as a builder whilst renovating another house. In 1995, Rupert married pianist Sophie Roper-Curzon. They live in Hampshire with five children.
LUIS DOMINGUES is Anglo-Portuguese and lives in East London. A member of the Royal Court Young Writers Group, he completed a year-long series of masterclasses with Hanif Kureishi. In the late 1990s, Luis lived and worked in Australia for over a year as assistant manager for a touring troupe of magicians and comedians. Luis has written and/or adapted several plays, including 'The Dice Man' performed at the Live Theatre, Newcastle and 'The Pleasure Pot' at the Finborough Theatre, London. His short play 'Gorgeous' was programmed at the Brighton International Festival 2001 and another short piece, 'The Dying Game', was performed at the Royal Court Theatre as part of their 'Short Cuts Through the Carnival' season in collaboration with the BBC.
Luis also adapts classic Portuguese works for the stage — notable credits include Eca de Queiros' 'The Crime Of Father Amaro' produced at the Greenwich Playhouse, and a puppet adaptation of Luis Vaz de Camoes' 'The Lusiads' performed at The Museum Of by Wireframe, on London's South Bank. He is currently teaching English and Drama at The BRIT School of Performing Arts. He is working on his first novel.