Patience Agbabi

Patience Agbabi FRSL is a poet, performer, mentor and novelist. She was born in London to Nigerian parents, studied English Language and Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford, and currently lives in Kent. She is a Fellow in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University and author of four poetry collections. Agbabi’s poem, ‘The Doll’s House’, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2014. She was Canterbury Laureate from 2009 to 2010 and received a Grant for the Arts and an Authors’ Foundation Grant to write a contemporary version of The Canterbury Tales; Telling Tales (Canongate Books) was shortlisted for the 2014 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and Wales Book of the Year 2015. In 2016 she contributed a collaborative poem, ‘The Refugee’s Tale’, to Refugee Tales (Comma Press) and participated in a reverse pilgrimage walk from Canterbury to London to raise awareness around asylum seekers’ issues. She is author of the prizewinning Leap Cycle tetralogy for young people and her YA novel-in-verse, Wonderland, will appear with Firefly Press in 2026. Author photo © Lyndon Douglas