​Vanessa Kisuule

Vanessa Kisuule is a writer and performer based in Bristol. She has won over ten slam titles including The Roundhouse Slam 2014, Hammer and Tongue National Slam 2014 and the Nuoryican Poetry Slam. She has been featured on BBC iPlayer, Radio 1, and Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Blue Peter, Don’t Flop and TEDx in Vienna. She has appeared at an array of literary and music festivals and was Glastonbury Festival’s Resident Poet in 2019.

Her poem on the historic toppling of Edward Colston’s statue, Hollow, gained over 600,000 views on Twitter in three days. She has two poetry collections published by Burning Eye Books and her work was Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry Prize Anthology 2019. She has written for publications including The Guardian, NME and Lonely Planet and has publication credits in pending anthologies with Canongate, Orion and Penguin Random House. She has worked extensively in theatre with Bristol Old Vic, Kneehigh Theatre and Pentabus and her Arts Council supported show, SEXY, toured nationally in 2017. She was the Bristol City Poet for 2018–2020 and will be co-tutor for Southbank Centre’s first ever Poetry Collective alongside Will Harris. She is currently working on an essay collection and her debut novel.