Books is here.

Vivien Urban

Vivien was born in Hungary but at the age of eleven moved to the UK, where she attended the Oxford Spires Academy and enjoyed writing poetry as a way to improve her English. Her poem ‘Hungary’ was included in the anthology England: Poems from a School, edited by Kate Clanchy, who taught her creative writing. Vivien studies English, Languages and Creative Writing at St Andrews University.

Hungary is here.

Kate Wakeling

Kate is a musicologist and writer, whose debut collection of verse for children, Moon Juice, won the 2017 CLiPPA and was nominated for the 2018 Carnegie Medal. Her poetry for adults has been published in publications including the Guardian, The Forward Book of Poetry 2016 and The Best British Poetry 2014. Kate is writer-in-residence with Aurora Orchestra and co-creator of Far Far Away, a series of children’s storytelling concerts. She has performed at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the Southbank Centre and Wigmore Hall, among other venues. Kate also writes for publications including the Times Literary Supplement and BBC Music Magazine.

The Instructions is here.

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784)

Phillis was seized from West Africa and sold into slavery in the household of John Wheatley in Boston aged only seven. The Wheatleys did not excuse her from domestic work but they did ensure that she was well educated, and she began to write and publish poetry in her teens. Phillis always enjoyed greater success in England than in America, and she visited London and met dignitaries including Benjamin Franklin in 1771. After the Wheatleys died, Phillis married a free black man called John Peters, but in the harsh job market following the American Civil War they descended into poverty. She died, along with their last surviving child, while John was languishing in a debtors’ prison, though she never stopped writing and endeavouring to publish her work.

Extract from On Imagination is here.

Anna Wickham (1883–1947)

Born Edith Alice Mary Harper, Anna moved between Australia, France and the UK – her pseudonymous surname was inspired by a Brisbane street. Her possessive husband tried to put an end to her singing and writing career, and she suffered a breakdown and a brief spell in an asylum. Anna published several collections of poetry which were hugely popular especially in America, and had many literary friends, including Katherine Mansfield and H.D. Those friendships, however, were sometimes tempestuous: she was rumoured to have once thrown poet Dylan Thomas out of her house during a snowstorm.

Divorce is here.

Ella May Wiggins (1900–1929)

Ella was active in the National Textile Workers Union, fighting for workers’ rights in Gastonia, North Carolina, where she worked as a spinner. Four of her nine children died of whooping cough after the mill superintendent refused to change her from the night to the day shift to tend them. When she quit her job to look after them, she couldn’t afford the medicine to save them. Ella wrote and sang her ballads to support the cause. In 1929, at the height of the workers’ strikes, she was shot and killed by five Loray Mill employees, who were exonerated despite over fifty witnesses to the murder.