- Jason Allen-Paisant, Writer
JASON ALLEN-PAISANT is a scholar, award-winning poet, and writer. He explores the ways in which Afro-diasporic artists and communities shape their futures through embodied, living philosophies. His work is deeply concerned with poetry, and the overlaps between poetry and philosophy. His first book of poems Thinking with Trees won the poetry category of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature; it was also shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. His second, Self-Portrait as Othello, is a Poetry Book Society Choice and the winner of the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection as well as the 2023 T. S. Eliot Prize. He collaborates regularly with artists working in different media. Recent collaborations have included the Manchester Art Gallery, the Cincinnati Art Museum and LUX Moving Image (London). Jason is a Professor of Critical Theory and Creative Writing in the Department of English, American Studies, and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, and an alumnus of the University of the West Indies (Mona), the École normale supérieure (Ulm), and the University of Oxford. He is the author of Théâtre dialectique postcolonial (Classiques Garnier) and of Engagements with Aimé Césaire: Thinking with Spirits (Oxford University Press). His memoir, The Possibility of Tenderness, will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann in March 2025.