Face to face

Malika Booker is a writer, spoken word and multidisciplinary artist, whose work spans literature, education and cross-arts. She has appeared world-wide both independently and with the British Council. She was one of the touring poets with Bittersweet in 1999/2000 and since has featured in the spoken word project, Modern Love, and in Kin at the Barbican in 2004 - a show incorporating words, music and visuals. She was commissioned to co-produce a poetry film to commemorate the Royal Festival Hall's 50th Birthday Celebrations in Spring 2001. Her first musical play, Catwalk, commissioned by NITRO, ran at the Tricycle Theatre in June 2001 and had a successful UK tour. 

She was Hampton Court Palace writer in residence in 2004, and is now a commissioned writer for Croydon Museum. In 2005 she undertook a two-month writer fellowship in Delhi, to work on her first novel.  

She is an experienced creative writing course leader and has run courses for various organisations including The Arvon Foundation, National Theatre and the Young Vic. She worked with young people for the Inner-London Teenager Poetry Slam in 2003 and 2004, which resulted in two collections of their writing, Where I'm From, Where I'm Going and The Way We See It, The Way It Is. 

Malika Booker also jointly runs 'Malika's Kitchen', a writers' collective based in London and Chicago. Her latest play, Unplanned, opened in Spring 2007, with a run at Battersea Arts Centre. Her book, Breadfruit, was also published in 2007.