Join us for a night of conversation, performances and celebration as we mark 30 years of Spread the Word and give you a glimpse of the exciting things ahead.
For three decades, Spread the Word has championed writers, connected communities and created space for stories that need to be heard.
We want to thank you, our supporters, for 30 fantastic years. Join us for a night of conversation, performances and celebration as we mark this amazing milestone together and give you a glimpse of the exciting things ahead.
Expect the warmest of welcomes with introductions from Bernardine Evaristo and Ruth Borthwick, new commissioned work by Momtaza Mehri and an intimate in-conversation featuring Diana Evans, Malika Bookerand Oisín McKenna; with Tice Cin on the decks to close the night in style.
This moment is about more than looking back. It’s a chance to reflect on our impact and share what the future holds.
Access information: BSL interpreted. Relaxed space. Lift access. Accessible toilets.
About our speakers
Bernardine Evaristo is the author of the 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other. Other fiction titles include Mr. Loverman (adapted into a BAFTA-winning BBC miniseries, 2024), Hello Mum (adapted into a BBC R4 play 2014), Blonde Roots, The Emperor’s Babe (adapted into a BBC R4 play, 2013) and Lara. Her numerous other works span many genres including a memoir Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (2021). An international bestseller, she has received over 90 honours including two British Book Awards (2020), the Women’s Prize ‘Outstanding Contribution Award’ (2025) and The (Black) Powerlist ‘Woman of the Year’ Award (2025). She has been the subject of two documentaries on The Southbank Show (2020) and Imagine (2021). A longstanding activist and advocate for the inclusion, she has founded many initiatives including The Complete Works Poetry Mentoring Scheme (2007-2017) and Spread the Word with Ruth Borthwick in 1995. Bernardine is President of the Royal Society of Literature (2022-2025) and Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London.
Ruth Borthwick is a literature activist. She worked as a bookseller and publisher before founding Spread the Word with Bernardine Evaristo in 1995. In the Noughties, Ruth was Head of Literature and Talks at the Southbank Centre, and Director of Arvon, the home of creative writing, for ten years. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, and is Chair of English PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organisation which champions freedom of expression for writers and their readers.
Momtaza Mehri is a Somali-British poet and essayist. She grew up in the Middle East and is currently based in London. She began writing poetry for publication in 2014. Her work has appeared in the likes of Granta, Artforum, The Guardian, BOMB Magazine, and The Poetry Review. She is the former Young People’s Laureate for London and columnist-in-residence at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space, as well as a Frontier-Antioch Fellow at Antioch University. In 2018 she was the co-winner of the Brunel International African Poetry prize, and in 2019 she won the Manchester Writing Prize. Her latest pamphlet, Doing the Most with the Least, was published by Goldsmiths Press.
Dr Malika Booker (RSFL) a Caribbean British poet, lectures at Manchester Metropolitan University, co-founded Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (A Writer’s collective) and is the first woman to win the Forward Prize for Best Single poem twice. Her published work includes Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree, 2007) Breadfruit (flippedeyepublishing, 2007), and the anthology Your Family, Your Body: Penguin Modern Poets 3 9Penguin, 2027).
Diana Evans is the award-winning, bestselling author of four novels and a collection of nonfiction. Her work has received many prize nominations, including the Guardian and Commonwealth Best First Book awards for 26a, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction for Ordinary People, which also won the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. She is a former dancer and has published widely as a journalist in Vogue, The Guardian, Time magazine and Harper’s Bazaar among others. She has taught creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, Arvon, First Story, Curtis Brown Creative and the University of East Anglia, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Oisín McKenna grew up in Drogheda, Ireland, and lives in London. His novel Evenings and Weekends, described by both Dazed and The Evening Standard as ‘the book of the summer’, was published in 2024 by 4th Estate (UK) and Mariner Books (US). He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends and it was developed with further support from Arts Council England. In 2022, he was awarded a London Writers Award, and in 2017, he was named in the Irish Times as one of the best spoken word artists in the country. He has written and performed four theatre shows, including ADMIN, an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019, and his writing has appeared in GQ, the Evening Standard, the Irish Times, Banshee, and more.
Tice Cin is a poet and writer from Tottenham, North London. Her debut novel Keeping the House was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the British Book Award Book of the Year Prize in 2022. Keeping the House also won a Society of Authors Somerset Maugham Prize and was named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of 2021 and in 2024.