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MEET THE TEAM
Aaron Kent
Director / Editor
Aaron Kent is a working-class writer and insomniac from Cornwall. Aaron was awarded the Awen medal in 2020, and his poetry has been translated into French, Hungarian, Kernewek, Cymraeg, Latvian, German, and Spanish among others. His 2nd collection, The Working Classic, is out with the87press in October 2023.
Agent: Kate Rizzo @ Greene & Heaton
Stuart McPherson
Assitant Editor (Poetry)
Stuart McPherson is a prize-winning poet from the UK. Recent poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog Magazine, Bath Magg, Poetry Wales, and Anthropocene. The pamphlet Waterbearer was published in December 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. A debut full length collection Obligate Carnivore was published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2022. In October 2022, Stuart was the winner of the Ambit Annual Poetry Competition.
Cathleen Allyn Conway
Assistant Editor (Prose)
Dr. Cathleen Allyn Conway is a poet, journalist, and student at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she is completing her doctoral studies on intersections of Sylvia Plath and the Gothic in experimental poetics. She publishes scholarship and poems. She is very enthusiastic about fonts. Originally from Chicago, she lives in south London.
Emma Kennedy
Administrator
Emma is the administrator of Broken Sleep Books, and ensures the daily running of the press goes smoothly. Emma likes to read tarot, and immerse herself in all things witchy, while making sure the Broken Sleep orders go out with a quirky sticker on the envelope.
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Andre Bagoo
Editorial Assistant
Andre Bagoo is a Trinidadian poet and writer. His fourth poetry collection, Narcissus, was published by Broken Sleep in 2022 and he served as a guest editor of The Poetry Review in that year. He is also the author of an award-winning essay collection, The Undiscovered Country, which was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2020 and described by Ilya Kaminsky as “brilliant”, as well as the short story collection, The Dreaming.
Charley Barnes
Editorial Assistant
Dr Charley Barnes is an author and academic based in the West Midlands. Charley works across poetry and prose. Her most recent poetry pamphlet, Unfaithful, was published by Salo Press in May 2023. In prose, Charley specialises in crime fiction though she is currently experimenting with other genres. Her academic work focuses on representations of truth in True Crime narration, and her debut monograph, Deconstructing True Crime Literature, is published with Palgrave Macmillan.
Agent: Andrew James @ Frog Literary Agency
Kit Ingram
Editorial Assistant
Kit Ingram is a Canadian poet, writer, and editor based in London. His work has been widely anthologised and appeared in Ambit, Magma, and The North. His narrative poem, Alice and Antius (Penrose Press, 2022), was a Booklife at Publishers Weekly selection described as a ‘moving, gorgeous novel in verse … and must-read elegy for the Anthropocene.’ His debut UK collection, Aqueous Red, will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2023.
Seanin Hughes
Editorial Assistant
Seanin Hughes is a working class and neurodivergent writer and editor from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. She has had work published both in the UK and further afield, and in 2018 was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing.
Seanin debuted with Broken Sleep Books in 2022 with her pamphlet She, Shapeshifter and her first full-length collection, Reasons for Admission, is forthcoming in 2025.
ADVISORY BOARD
Charlie Baylis
Chief Editorial Advisor
Charlie Baylis is from Nottingham. He is the Editor of Anthropocene and the Chief Editorial Advisor to Broken Sleep Books. His poetry has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize. His most recent publication is Santa Lucía (Invisible Hand Press).He spends his spare time completely adrift of reality.
Joseph Kent
Design Advisor
The older brother to Aaron, Joseph Kent has been enthusiastic about design since college. He holds an ND in Graphics and a HND in Games Design and has been working in photo editing and graphic design for a while. He was diagnosed with ASD and feels this is the reason he sees things others don't when it comes to design and photography.
Suna Afshan
Editorial Advisor
Suna Afshan is a poet and freelance editor from the Midlands. She is co-founder and Editor at Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, and Director of Pallina Press. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Birmingham City University. In 2018 she was awarded with the University's Mercian Prize. Suna’s work is concerned with the apotheosis of poetry, and her 2020 micro-pamphlet Belladonna was published with Legitimate Snack.
Jennifer Edgecombe
Editorial Advisor
Jennifer Edgecombe grew up in Cornwall and now lives on the Kent coast and works in publishing. Her debut poetry pamphlet The Grief of the Sea was published by Broken Sleep Books in June 2020. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Ambit, Caught by the River, Lighthouse, PN Review, and Wild Court.
Jazmine Linklater
Editorial Advisor
Jazmine Linklater has published the pamphlets Toward Passion According (Zarf, 2017) and Découper, Coller (Dock Road Press, 2018). She is a co-founder of the queer feminist reading series, No Matter, in Manchester, and in 2018-19 was a Poetry London mentee with Vahni Capildeo. A third pamphlet, Figure a Motion, was published by Guillemot Press in September 2020.
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Gurdeep Mattu
Editorial & Contractual Advisor
Gurdeep Mattu is a publisher and the author of Sons and Fascination (Paperbooks, 2011) as well as several pamphlets. He works as an Editorial Project Manager at the British Standards Institution (BSI). His poetic influences include Walt Whitman, H.D. and William Carlos Williams. Gurdeep is working on his second novel and can be found blogging at gurdeepmattu.wordpress.com
Jack Warren
Editorial Advisor
Jack Warren is an environmentalist and poet from the South West. He has worked as a labourer and bartender for most of his career however he currently works in conservation. He holds an MA in Poetics from the University of York, an MSc in Applied Ecology from the University of Gloucestershire, and his poetry can be found in Magma, Anomaly, the Cardiff Review and others.
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