Join writers and poets for a lively evening of spoken word, literature and tales from around the world.

With special guests Umi Sinha (Milton Keynes), Colin Grant (Crawley) and Hannah Lowe (Crawley) and live DJ set from the legendary African Night Fever.


Food & drink by donation, books for sale.
Milton Keynes – Fri 10 March, 7-8.30pm @ MKGallery
Crawley  – Thurs 18 May, 7.30-9pm @ Crawley Library, part of WORDfest
Free entry

Book your ticket either through our online ticketing below or by emailing info@writingourlegacy.org.uk.
Milton Keynes billetto.co.uk/en/events/spotlight-spoken-word-milton-keynes
Crawley billetto.co.uk/en/events/spotlight-spoken-word-crawley
ABOUT THE AUTHORS 
Umi Sinha was born in India and spent the first ten years of her life on a remote naval engineering base in the Western Ghats. She moved to Britain with her mother and siblings at the age of fifteen. Her mother, born in Kent, was a writer and an artist. Her father was one of the first Indians to be accepted as an officer in the Royal Indian Navy and served on the Arctic Convoys in the Second World War.
Her short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies. She has an MA in Creative Writing and taught on the Certificate in Creative Writing at Sussex University for ten years. She has also worked as a Lecturer in Creative Writing on the MA at Brighton University and currently teaches on the Creative Writing Programme at New Writing South. She also runs her own courses and workshops, mentors other writers, and offers manuscript appraisal and editing support, and resources for writers at her Writing Clinic. Belonging is her first novel.
From the darkest days of the British Raj to the aftermath of the First World War,Belonging tells the interwoven story of three generations and their struggles to understand and free themselves from a troubled history steeped in colonial violence. This is a novel of secrets that unwind through Lila Langdon’s story of exile to England, through her grandmother Cecily’s letters home from India, and through the diaries kept by her father, Henry, as he puzzles over the enigma of his birth and his stormy marriage to the mysterious Rebecca.
Colin Grant is the author of A Smell of BurningNegro with a HatI and I The Natural Mystics and Bageye at the Wheel. As well as an author, Colin Grant teaches creative non-fiction writing, most recently for Arvon and Sierra Nevada College
Grant is also a historian, Associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies and producer for BBC Radio.  He joined the BBC in 1991, and has worked as a TV script editor and radio producer of arts and science programmes on radio 4 and the World Service. He has written and directed plays including The Clinic, based on the lives of the photojournalists, Tim Page and Don McCullin.
Grant has written and produced several radio drama-documentaries including:

  • African Man of Letters: The Life of Ignatius Sancho
  • A Fountain of Tears: The Murder of Federico Garcia Lorca
  • Move over Charlie Brown: The Rise of Boondocks

Grant is represented by Sophie Lambert at Conville and Walsh.  He lives in southern England with Jo and their three children, Jasmine, Maya and Toby.
Hannah Lowe is a poet and memoirist whose evocative work has used the enigmatic figure of her Chinese-black-Jamaican father to probe the mysteries of multicultural London.
She came to prominence with Chick, a collection loosely based around an attempt to explore the secrets her late parent, a migrant who supported his family through gambling (under the card shark nickname ‘Chick’) in London’s old East End.  In doing so the book offered a unique insight into the recent history of the capital and introduced a new perspective on sometimes overlooked marginal figures from the city’s past.
Photo: Paul Jackson