Thursday 3 July, 19:00 – 20:45 British Library Pigott Theatre
Ekow Eshun, Khaldoon Ahmed, Clementine E Burnley, Colin Grant, and Donna Thompson
On Thursday 3 July 2025 WritersMosaic and The British Library’s Eccles Institute will present
Fanon: Revolutionary psychiatrist and anti-colonial freedom fighter, exploring the legacy of Frantz Fanon on the centenary of his birth. The Afro-Caribbean writer’s seminal texts, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), are classics of anti-colonial literature which have inspired generations of thinkers, activists and writers. Deeply engaged in the struggle for Algerian independence, Fanon was a philosopher, colonial soldier, colonial administrator, progressive psychiatrist, institutional reformer, guerilla fighter, family man, and speechwriter. 100 years on from his birth in Fort-de-France, Martinique, Fanon’s writing for the emancipation of colonised peoples everywhere continues to echo into the 21st century.
For the centenary of Fanon’s birth, WritersMosaic, in collaboration with the British Library’s Eccles Institute, returns to the British Library, bringing together writers and performers including Ekow Eshun, Khaldoon Ahmed, Clementine E Burnley, Colin Grant, and Donna Thompson to explore Fanon’s revolutionary philosophy and impact.
Ekow Eshun is a writer, curator, and broadcaster whose work stretches the span of identity, style, masculinity, art and culture. Eshun’s latest book, The Strangers, is a work of creative nonfiction exploring the inner lives of five extraordinary Black men, including Frantz Fanon. As a curator, one of his most recent exhibitions, The Time Is Always Now, has been hailed as a landmark study of the Black figure and its representation in contemporary art. Eshun’s writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, The Observer, Esquire and Wired.
Khaldoon Ahmed is a consultant psychiatrist, writer, and filmmaker. He was born in London to a Pakistani family. He studied medicine at UCL where he also completed a master’s degree in anthropology. He is deeply involved at the interface of arts and mental health. He was a trustee for the charity Mental Fight Club and was one of the founders of the Dragon Café. He is a doctor working in the NHS in East London and teaches medical students. His short films have screened in festivals around the world, and he participated as a ‘talent’ at the Berlinale.
Clementine E Burnley is a poet, writer, political scientist, and conflict mediator. Born in Cameroon, Burnley now lives and works between the UK and Germany. She holds an MSc in Applied Linguistics from Manchester University, and is studying the links between trauma, conflict mediation, and group facilitation at the Research Society for Process Oriented Psychotherapy. Her work has been published in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Magma, The Poetry Review and WritersMosaic. In 2021 her poem ‘How to Eat Frogs’ was selected by Hugh Macmillan as one of the Best Scottish Poems. She was the RSL Sky Award Winner for creative nonfiction in 2021.
Colin Grant is the Director of WritersMosaic, his booksinclude Bageye at the Wheel, short-listed for the Pen Ackerley Prize, and Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. His latest book is I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be. His oral history of migration to Britain, What We Leave We Carry will be published in 2025. Grant is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and director of WritersMosaic, a division of the Royal Literary Fund. He also writes for a number of newspapers including the TLS, Guardian, Observer and New York Review of Books.
Donna Thompson is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in London. Thompson’s work engages with themes of self-love, community, and strength found in others. Her debut EP Something True, released in 2022 by PRAH Recordings, was described as “gripping” by the Guardian. Thompson has also collaborated with many musicians, accompanying Alabaster DePlume live on numerous occasions.