Malika Booker is a British writer of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, who writes poetry, plays and solo monologues. Her poems are widely anthologised in anthologies and journals including Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry (The Women's Press, 1998), Wasafiri; No 32 (Autumn 2000), The Penguin Anthology of New Black Writing (2000), The India International Journal (2005), Altas: New Writing (Crossword Press, 2006), Poetry from Art at the Tate Modern (Tate Modern, 2010), Red, Contemporary Black British Poetry (Peepal Tree Press, 2010), Ten New Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010).
She has been a Writer in Residence for Hampton Court Palace, Croydon Museum and The Center for Slovenian Literature as well as an Arts Council Fellow at The India International Centre in Delhi, and has represented British writing internationally, both independently and with the British Council in Slovenia, New Zealand, Malaysia, India, Russia and Azerbaijan.
Malika has performed her work at many venues around the world and has written for the stage and radio. In 1999 her first solo theatre show Absolution was commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre and the Austrian Cultural Institute, her first musical play, Catwalk, commissioned by NITRO ran at the Tricycle Theatre and had a successful UK tour. She was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to create Bloodlines in July 2005, and in August, to create Scattered Experiences on BBC Radio's Woman's Hour, as part of their Travel Stories series. Her one-woman show, Unplanned, was produced by Apples & Snakes and toured nationwide throughout 2007.
Malika is the founder of 'Malika's Kitchen', a writers' collective based in London which offers weekly writers' surgeries, and publishing opportunities in anthologies. The influential Malika's Kitchen was established in August 2000 and is successfully supporting multicultural writers in their development of craft. Malika's Kitchen published two anthologies with flippedeye Press in 2006: Handmade Fire and A Storm between Fingers. She has run creative writing courses for organizations including Pembroke College, University of Westminster, The Arvon Foundation, and is now a Creative Writing tutor at City Lit. Her collection Breadfruit was published by flippedeye in 2007, and recommended by the Poetry Book Society. She is currently working on her first full length collection and is Poet in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Quotes
'This is work that doesn't have to raise its voice to compel us, and achieves most poets' secret desire: by looking without sentiment, and through listening without preconception, it has learnt how to carry a tune.'
W N Herbert, Ten: New Poets from Spread the Word,
Bernardine Evaristo & Daljit Nagra, eds, Bloodaxe 2010.
Press
'Booker is a consummate storyteller, full of confident charm… a beguiling evening.' Time Out
'No one can craft a monologue quite like Malika Booker.' New Nation