Between 2020 and 2023, over 35 award winning, established and emerging writers worked with Writer in Residence, Alinah Azadeh, to develop and produce new stories and poetry responding to Sussex’s sublime coastal landscape, through its history and topography, as part of We See You Now.
Eleven of these writers were commissioned to record their work for the We Hear You Now audio series.
The work they produced seeks to reframe the traditional pastoral image of the English coastal landscape through a global, poetic and quietly radical lens.
Find out more about the writers below.
-
Alinah Azadeh (she/her)
Alinah Azadeh is a writer, artist, performer and cultural activist of British Iranian heritage. She uses text, audio, and live practices to create poetic narratives that activate spaces, amplifying untold or overlooked stories.
As well as commissions for major museums and galleries over the last 30 years, Azadeh has had stories, poetry and articles published, most recently in Glimpse, the first anthology of speculative fiction by Black British writers, published by Peepal Tree Press, edited by Leone Ross.She is inaugural writer-in-residence at Seven Sisters Country Park / Sussex Heritage Coast, commissioned by the South Downs National Park Authority, and led the We See You Now (2019–22), a decolonial landscape and literature programme which has produced We Hear You Now, a new body of work for audio tour across the landscape from June 2023–2028. Both are funded by Arts Council England. Alinah also presents for broadcast, and has a podcast, The Colour of Chalk. She is writing her artist memoir, which was longlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2020.
Azadeh is a Changing Chalk Associate Artist for Writing Our Legacy/The National Trust and an alumni of Julie’s Bicycle’s Climate, Culture, Action programme, Colour Green. www.alinahazadeh.com
-
Razia Aziz (she/her)
Razia’s creative practice involves written and spoken word, live and recorded song and music. It flows alongside her work as a coach, facilitator and consultant – a weave made possible by a steadfast meditation practice, loving circles of family, friends and community – and the constant support of the natural surroundings.
Razia has lived in the lap of the South Downs for most of her life. Her recent work is oriented toward re-languaging and re-telling the landscape by accessing precious seams of ancestry buried in it and in us, which have been disrupted, but not destroyed, by the march of history.It includes Challé Gayé (a bilingual soundscape at the Chattri monument commissioned by Witness Stand at Brighton Festival 2022). Razia has created three albums of music (western and Hindustani), composed music for theatre and written and performed plays. Razia is also a Changing Chalk Associate Artist for Writing Our Legacy/The National Trust. www.waytu.co
-
Dulani Kulasinghe (she/her)
Dulani Kulasinghe is a writer and teacher whose work explores belonging, contested histories and legacies of empire.
Her work is used in the interdisciplinary Liberal Arts BA at the University of Sussex and she has run writing workshops for young people in Brighton, where she is also involved in anti-racist curriculum change.Her writing, supported by Writing Our Legacy and Arts Council England, has been published in the anthology Hidden Sussex: a new anthology for Sussex (2019) and forms part of several site-responsive productions including The Chattri Witness Stand for Brighton Festival 2022.
Dulani is a New Writing South Fellow and lives in Brighton with her family. www.dulanikulasinghe.com
-
Akila Richards (she/her)
Akila Richards is a poet, writer and spoken word artist, performing and collaborating in the UK and abroad.
She has created work for theatre, audio podcasts, soundscapes and film, digital platforms, cultural and for artistic events.Her most recent poems and short stories featured in ‘Witness Stand’ at Brighton Festival 22, Artist in House residency at Brighton Dome for her ongoing ‘Rest Experience’ exploration, Covert Magazine and speculative anthology Glimpse (Peepal Tree Press).
Akila’s poetry pamphlet ‘Ritual for a Mango’ is currently being edited for publication and she is writing her first novel. https://akilarichards.wordpress.com/
-
Georgina Aboud (she/her)
Georgina Aboud is a writer and creative practitioner from Eastbourne.
She is the recipient of the Moth Short Story Prize and a New Writing South:21. Fellowship.Her book Cora Vincent was published as part of the Spotlight Books series, and her work features in current and upcoming anthologies.
Latest commissions include collaborative pieces for the Brighton Festival.
She is an awardee of a Shifting the Gaze bursary with Writing Our Legacy, where she is also a Changing Chalk Associate Artist for the National Trust.
Georgina is currently working on a novel, and with the assistance of a recent grant from Arts Council England, is developing her first poetry pamphlet.
-
Jenny Arach (she/her)
Jenny writes poetry reflecting family experiences related to her life in East Africa and Sussex.
She enjoys writing through the lens of the coastal landscape between Eastbourne and Brighton.She has been published in Hidden Sussex Anthology (Writing Our Legacy 2019), Covert Magazine (Issue 1& 2).
She was commissioned to write a poem, ‘The Harbour Lights’ for Tenebrae: Lessons Learnt in Darkness for Brighton Festival 2021.
She won a runner up prize in the Brighton & Hove Poetry Competition 2021 with ‘The Tiger Within‘, inspired by the first We See You Now writers retreat. She has also had two poems published in the South Downs National Park newsletter (March 2022) ‘A Matriarch Landscape’ and ‘Landscape of my Mother’ and most recently was commissioned to write ‘A Proper Goodbye’ for Brighton Festival, East Brighton,- for Witness Stand, May 2022.
-
Joyoti Grech Cato (she/they/he)
Joyoti Grech Cato is a published writer guided by their intersectional experience of life, including being a parent, QTBIPOC, disabled by society, of Indigenous (Jumma) and Maltese origin, a migrant living in the South Downs National Park area since 1971; the teachings of their ancestors and contemporary Dharma teachers and the principles of Mutual Aid.
Cato is a Changing Chalk Associate Artist for Writing Our Legacy/The National Trust.https://writingourlegacy.org.uk/writers-testimonials-joyoti-grech-cato/
-
Oluwafemi Hughes (she/her)
Oluwafemi Hughes writes prose-poetry on the texture of marginalisation, from landscapes of to the personal, social, natural worlds and beyond, and other transforming experiences.
With African-Indian heritage, she writes on gaining Scottish and Sussex identities, and her writing reflects a connection with nature, deepened through exploring and writing about Seven Sisters and surrounds.Her work was published in Ink on my Lips, 2013 (Waterloo Press); Hidden Sussex: a new anthology for Sussex (2019);) and she also has written short stories for Disability Arts.
In 2019/2020 she was commissioned to write poetry for Tenebrae: Lessons Learnt in Darkness, for Brighton Festival.
-
Georgina Parke (she/her)
Georgina Parke is a British poet and writer of Jamaican mixed-race heritage.
She grew up by the Lincolnshire coast and has lived in Sussex for 18 years.She was commissioned by the National Ambulance BME Conference and Forum to read poetry to users on intersectionality and identity; was invited by the University of Sussex to speak on Writing Race, Gender and the Social.
She was published in Hidden Sussex: a new anthology for Sussex (2019) and commissioned to write poetry for Tenebrae, 2020: Lessons Learnt in Darkness for Brighton Festival 2021.
She is currently finishing a young adult fiction book, The Doves of Moulsecoomb.
She is a qualified psychotherapist and ‘Guide of Wild Edges’. Parke is also a Changing Chalk Associate Artist for Writing Our Legacy/The National Trust. https://georginaparke.org/
-
Pauline Rutter (she/her)
Pauline Rutter is an archival artist and community and organisational poet based in West Sussex.
Her background in fine art, education, sustainability and activism show up in her academic and creative writing published online by The Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality Leeds Beckett University, The Culture Capital Exchange and The University of Oxford, Wytham Woods. She has also contributed to the Writing Our Legacy ‘Covert’ Literary Magazine Editions 2 and 3. Pauline has been the Artist in Residence for Adur and Worthing Council’s Climate Assembly and has developed creative writing and poetry in response to the ongoing Adur rewilding initiative.Pauline’s practice is evolving through her Black Feminist historiographical research into collective wisdom, and intersectional, embodied praxis. This has also informed her development of ‘The Black Living Archive’ collaborative project and installation shown at ONCA gallery Brighton.
Pauline holds degrees in Fine Art and in Education, a Master’s in International Business Management and an Advanced Diploma in Environmental Management. She continues to write on personal and wider social themes relating to history, community, equity and climate and environmental justice. You can explore more of Pauline’s research and creative work here: linktr.ee/paulinerutter
-
Sheila Auguste (she/her/hers)
Sheila Auguste is of St. Lucian heritage, born and raised in East London. She has lived in Brighton since 1997.
She first published a short story in 1995 and has continued to write, publish, and occasionally perform since that time. She is published in the anthology Hidden Sussex (2019) and Covert Magazine.Her poems ‘All Our Tears Are on the Outside Now’ and ‘Sketches of Shoreham’ were commissioned as part of collaborative installations produced for Brighton Festivals 2021 and 2022. She is a qualified relationship and psychosexual therapist and has an MA in Creative writing the arts and education.
She spends a lot of time walking and thinking about writing, or she could be thinking about singing, yoga, dancing or most likely reading, she also listens to a lot of books these days.