Ruth Harrison joined Spread the Word in 2015. Her working life has been in the field of the arts and particularly in literature. She has been Director of Apples and Snakes, a literature development officer and programme manager at The Reading Agency. She is passionate about not only widening people’s engagement with writers and writing but also in developing writing talent. Widening participation and engagement alongside developing and building awareness of new voices has been core to her work.

Ruth has previously been a trustee of Little Green Pig – a charity working to inspire children and young people to get creative with writing, sits on the steering committee for The Literary Platform’s Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and is part of the team developing EmpathyLab – a start-up using words and stories to build young people’s empathy skills.

At Spread the Word, Ruth is responsible for leading the company artistically and strategically and working with our highly skilled and dedicated team to make a difference to and for writers and their audiences in London.

Contact Ruth at ruth@spreadtheword.org.uk

Patrice Lawrence is a Sussex-born migrant to London who has worked in the voluntary sector for more than twenty years, from advice services to young people’s sexual health to children’s and family work and the criminal justice system. Her proudest moment is coordinating creative writing workshops and a writing competition across prisons in England and Wales. Patrice is also a writer and Orangeboy, her debut novel for young adults has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards 2016.

Contact Patrice at patrice@spreadtheword.org.uk

At Spread the Word, Laura manages the organisation’s communications and oversees a variety of projects, including the London Short Story Prize, Life Writing Prize and Flight 1000.

Laura has worked with a diverse range of audiences within the arts. After studying English Literature at Cardiff University, she gained an MA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She has produced live art, comedy and theatre shows in London and at the Edinburgh Festival. She has also worked for Arts Award and Artsmark, The National Literacy Trust, as a local authority arts officer, a social care worker working with young asylum seekers and as a youth worker. She is passionate about enabling access to high quality writing opportunities and nurturing writing and creative talent. Laura joined Spread the Word in 2013.

She has judged writing prizes including the UCL Publishers’ Prize and Warwick University young people’s Shakespeare writing competition, written forewords and edited poetry and short story anthologies. In her spare time she pursues her own fiction, script and poetry writing and loves comedy.

Contact Laura at laura@spreadtheword.org.uk

Eva Lewin is Writer Development Manager at Spread the Word where she leads on the one-to-one support for writers, through feedback surgeries and professional development coaching. In 2015-16 she managed Jasmine Cooray’s BBC Performing Arts Fellowship and continues to work with Jasmine as an Associate Writer at Spread the Word.   Eva commissioned the Writing the Future research (published in 2015) into Black and Asian writers and publishers in the UK marketplace. She continues to work on the strategy to take forward the diversity agenda, including Spread the Word’s consultancy on WriteNow with Penguin Random House. Her twenty years’ experience in the literature sector includes curating creative writing programmes, co-directing the Hackney literature festival, running writers’ residencies and a shop-floor library at Ford’s car factory in Dagenham. Eva is an RD1st accredited coach (ILM Level 7 equivalent). Contact Eva at eva@spreadtheword.org.uk

Aliya has previously worked in audience engagement and marketing roles in both the theatre and literature sector. Currently Project and Communications Assistant at Spread the Word, Aliya is responsible for providing administrative support for their communications and projects, including the very exciting London Writers Network. Contact Aliya at aliya@spreadtheword.org.uk

JJ Bola, is a writer and poet, debut novelist, No Place to Call Home (OWN IT, 2017), MA Creative Writing student (Kit de Waal Scholar), Birkbeck, University of London (2017).

A Kinshasa born, London raised writer, poet, educator and workshop facilitator.  JJ Bola independently published three books of poetry Elevate (2012) and Daughter of the Sun (2014). His third, WORD (2015) is his most comprehensive poetry collection. JJ Bola’s work is centred on a narrative of empowerment, humanisation, healing of trauma as well as discovery of self through art, literature and poetry. Creating the increasingingly popular addage, ‘hype your writers like you do you rappers’, he believes that the true purpose of poetry (art) is to expose the reality of this world and how to, most importantly, survive it.

JJ Bola reads regularly at shows and festivals across London/UK such as  Tongue Fu, Vocals & Verses, Chill Pill, The Round House, Ventnor Fringe, Glastonbury etc as well as Universities; SOAS, UCL, Oxford, Lincoln, University of Birmingham, and a mini tour of the US West Coast in 2015/16, LA, Da Poetry Lounge, UCLA, Standford University and Merrit College in the Bay Area, San Francisco and Oakland, where he won the Oakland Poetry Slam. 

Remi-Lyn is a London based poet, novelist and philosopher. Spending most of her of her physical time in London. Intellectually she spends a lot of time with the writers and philosophers of the past past which gives her writing an air of reflection; an honesty that can only come from hindsight.

Her first novel, Child is a Dirty Word is due for completion at the end of 2017.

Remi-Lyn is part of the London based creative collective SXWKS and her first poetic work these are the most terrifying thoughts is published under SXWKS publishing. In 2015 she confounded AZ-MAG, an online publication centring around the experiences of British LGBT BMEs. 

Henry Brefo is a freelance editor, with a deep passion to bring more rich and diverse voices to the literary scene. He is currently undertaking a PhD research at University of Birmingham on Chieftaincy in Ghana. He is an avid reader and always on a look out for new voices. A lover of cultures, jazz and whisky, Henry is as groovy as they come.