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Nadine Aisha Jassat

Position
Author, writer

Nadine Aisha Jassat is an award-winning writer and author of poetry collection Let Me Tell You This; described as a ‘beautifully written, immense and full of passion’ by Nikita Gill, and ‘a joy both live and on the page’ by Hollie McNish. She has performed her work internationally, including as part of Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Outriders Africa, and has appeared across media, including BBC’s The Big Scottish Book Club. Her work has drawn significant acclaim: including winning a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, the UK Open Call for the British Council’s Discover Project, and being shortlisted for the Outspoken London Poetry Prize and the prestigious Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. She has been published widely, including in popular anthologies such as Picador’s It’s Not About the Burqa, 404 Ink’s Nasty Women, and Bloodaxe Books’ Staying Human. In 2019 she was named by Scotland’s Makar Jackie Kay in her International Literature Showcase selection of 10 Compelling ‘BAME’ writers working in the UK, with Kay writing: ‘Hers is a powerful, unforgettable new voice.’

Find out more via visiting www.nadineaishaj.com.

ETHER Seminar Two Abstract: Writing from the In-between: Nadine Aisha Jassat

Nadine Aisha Jassat is a writer and poet who writes in the spaces of the inbetween: between cultures, countries, and in many ways between the self, too. This liminality is often reflected not just in the content of her writing, but also in the form it takes, whether structurally or in genre: with her prose straddling the bridge between autofiction and memoir, and her poetry focused on telling a story through spoken word, while also telling its own tale through its form on the page. Writing from the in-between, from a position of differences and dualities present within one person, one self, offers the chance for the creation of something new – for defining the self by and for oneself, where differences dissolve into whole. In the form of a reading, and the sharing of film poetry made the author, Nadine will explore how she navigates this space of ‘in-between’ in her work, building her own bridge and situating herself firmly on it: calling wherever her feet rest home.