Suad Kamardeen is a British-Nigerian Muslim writer, editor and a Creative Writing Masters student at the University of Oxford. She is committed to documenting histories and cultures, as well as impacting people’s lives positively through storytelling.

Her young adult novel, Never Enough, won the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2022, and her adult novel was shortlisted for the Stylist Prize for Feminist Fiction 2021. Her writing has also appeared in Bad Form Review and Sapelo Square. She is currently working on an adult and young adult novel, both of which address universal themes of female friendships and sisterhood, joy, mother-daughter relationships, longing, grief, identity and love.

Suad runs Qalb Writers Collective, a community to support Black and Muslim women writers with knowledge and resources. She also co-hosts two podcasts with friends: Bookversations, where she has reflective conversations inspired by books she cares about, and Ọrẹ Meji: Yoruba ni ṣoki, a podcast centred on embracing her mother tongue, Yoruba.

You can find her on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram @suadkamardeen

Favourite Book: This is so hard! My fave changes every time, but at the moment it’s Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi – stellar work of art!

Sahra Malin is a Somali-Dutch writer. She’s motivated by the healing effects of literature and writing, and likes to dabble in various art forms to find new ways to express herself - from photography to watercolour painting.

She is currently working on her debut poetry collection, covering a variety of topics from womanhood and identity to the intersection between love and grief. Her day time is spent in tech, leading product teams that build sustainability minded products.

Sahra is passionate about creating safe spaces for the expression of “otherness”, which she hopes WAYF will provide for many artists and writers. She’s the founder of the Berlin Muslims meet up community and a founding member of the TEDxZurichWomen community.

You can find her on LinkedIn and access some of her musings and photography on Instagram via @sahra.malin

Favourite Book: I refuse to pick :) But I can say that the latest book that left a deep impression on me was “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi. It is rare for me to feel so impacted by each character in a multi-generational family saga. I can only attribute it to Gyasi’s thoughtful and humble writing on the human condition, enabling me to relate to characters so different from each other and from myself.