Keynotes

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is a critically acclaimed poet, writer and public educator focused on disrupting narratives about history, race and violence. She speaks and performs her work nationally and internationally and is the author of Seeing for Ourselves; and even stranger possibilities (2023); Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia (2022) and the poetry collection Postcolonial Banter. Suhaiymah is also a co-author of A FLY Girl’s Guide to University; and a contributor to the anthologies Cut from the Same Cloth? and I Refuse to Condemn. Her writing has featured on BBC Radio 4, in The Guardian and Al Jazeera, and her poetry has been viewed millions of times online. She is a co-founder of the Nejma Collective, a group of Muslims working in solidarity with people in prison. She is based in Leeds and is currently writing for theatre.

Muneera Pilgrim

Muneera Pilgrim is a Poet, Cultural Producer, Writer, Broadcaster on BBC and Ujima,  TEDx Speaker, and WOW Festival Speaker with international acclaim. She conducts workshops, shares art, guest lectures, hosts, and finds alternative ways to educate and exchange ideas while focusing on methodologies of empowerment for non-centered people. At heart, Muneera is a storyteller, concerned with telling stories to disrupt mainstream narratives of non-centered people globally and to beautify truths that are rarely told. 

Muneera regularly contributes to Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2,  she is an Alumni  Associate Artist with The English Touring Theatre, and she is an in-house poet and thinker, with In Between Time where she developed The Joy Project.

Muneera has written for The Guardian, Amaliah, Huffington Post, The Independent, Al Jazeera, Black Ballard and various other digital and print platforms. She has been featured across the BBC network including BBC News, as well as Sky News, Sky Arts, Al Jazeera, and various other television channels. In 2015 a documentary was commissioned and screened about her former group Poetic Pilgrimage Called Hip Hop Hijabis.

Muneera holds an MA in Islamic studies where she focused on Black British pathways to spirituality, migration, gender, and race. She holds a second MA in Women’s Studies, where she focused on the intersection of faith and spirituality, race, gender, autoethnography and methodologies of empowerment for non-centered people. Her innovation in her work and the use of poetry won her The Ann Kaloski-Naylor Award for Adventurous Academic Writing. 

She etches a poetic space of dialogue which is accessible to all regardless of religious and cultural boundaries. Rooted in spirituality she uses communication and art for edification, enrichment and change. 

Her Debut Poetry collection ‘That Day She’ll Proclaim Her Chronicles’ was released in November 2021 through Burning Eye Books.