EMC Face-to-Face: Reading and Writing for Pleasure – An EMC Teacher Conference

Andrew McCallum

Andrew McCallum is Director of the English and Media Centre. Prior to that he ran a PGCE course in secondary English, and previously he taught for 15 years in London schools, spending most of that time at Acland Burghley School in Camden. He holds a doctorate in education, is author of Creativity and Learning in Secondary English (Routledge) and writes regularly for NATE's Teaching English magazine. If asked to name the EMC publication he's most proud of having worked on, it would be a three-way contest between Iridescent Adolescent, Diverse Shorts and Write On.

Barbara Bleiman

Barbara Bleiman is an education consultant at EMC, co-editor of emagazine and the author of What Matters in English Teaching. She writes blogs and articles about education and has written or co-written many EMC publications for the classroom, including several resources on poetry, novels and language study. Among these are Doing Close Reading, Studying The Handmaid’s Tale, Sight/Unseen Poetry, KS3 Poetry Plus, as well as Curriculum Conversations: Going on an Odyssey. She takes the lead on EMC’s project on group work, ‘It’s Good to Talk’ and has a strong interest in ideas about the curriculum, developing the idea of ‘cultural conversations’ as a challenge to the notion of cultural capital. In 2019 she was awarded the NATE Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Teaching of English. She is also a Fellow of the English Association. Barbara is the author of two novels, Off the Voortrekker Road and Accidents of Love, and has recently published a collection of short stories, Kremlinology of Kisses.

Anmika Salter

Anmika works part time at the English and Media Centre in the Research and Projects team and is Head of Department in a large comprehensive school in North London the rest of the week. 

Kate Oliver

Kate Oliver taught for 14 years in Inner London in various roles. She now works as an education consultant for The English and Media Centre, specialising in KS3 and KS4. Her favourite aspects of English teaching are creative writing and poetry. She also has a particular interest in the wider implications of the subject such as getting students reading for pleasure and engaging teachers of other subjects with language across the curriculum. Her most recent publications for EMC are KS3 Poetry Plus, Just Write and Animal Farm: An EMC Full Text Study Edition.

Dean Atta

Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British author and poet of Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage whose works have received praise from Bernardine Evaristo and Malorie Blackman. His novel in verse, The Black Flamingo, about a Black gay teen finding his voice through poetry and drag performance, won the Stonewall Book Award and was shortlisted for numerous further prestigious awards. His poetry collection, There is (still) love here, explores acceptance, queer joy and the power of unapologetically being yourself and fully embracing who you are. Dean was born and raised in London, where he still lives.

Joanna Brown

Joanna Brown is an author, educator and researcher who writes to shine a light on the Black British past. Under the pen name J.T. Williams, she is the author of historical fiction series, The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries. In 2023 her debut novel The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries: Drama and Danger (Farshore Books) was winner of The Week Junior Book Awards (Breakthrough) and the Diverse Book Awards, and shortlisted for Foyles Children's Book of the Year and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize.  Her latest book, Bright Stars of Black British History (Thames and Hudson), is a richly illustrated collection presenting the extraordinary life stories of fourteen key Black British historical figures from Tudor England to modern Britain.

After many years as a primary school teacher, Joanna left full-time teaching to work with a focus on creative writing in libraries, galleries and museums. She set up the literary educational programme Africa Writes: Young Voices, inviting Black British poets to work with secondary school students to develop poetry for performance and joined the British Library as a freelance educator, running research and writing workshops across their exhibition programme. She continues to develop learning resources and CPD sessions for the BL with a focus on improving ethnic representation in literature and encouraging each child to see themselves as a reader and a writer. 

Joanna facilitates creative writing workshops for children and adults and is currently a PhD student and Visiting Tutor in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

Candy Gourlay

Candy Gourlay was born in the Philippines, grew up under a dictatorship and met her husband during a revolution. Growing up, she wondered why books only featured pink-skinned children who lived in worlds that didn’t resemble her tropical home in Manila. It took her years to learn that Filipino stories too, belong in the pages of books. She has been shortlisted for many prizes including the Waterstones and the Blue Peter Prize (Tall Story), the Guardian Prize (Shine) and the Costa and Carnegie (Bone Talk). She has also written picture books, children’s non fiction and early readers. Her most recent Wild Song, set in unknown history when indigenous people from the Philippines were put on exhibit in the United States in 1904, has been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Candy loves making comics and waging war on the snails in her garden.

Wild Song is a stunning achievement, The Bookseller
Heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Teen Librarian

Sita Brahmachari

Sita Brahmachari is an internationally award-winning Children’s and YA author whose work is translated into many languages. Since her Waterstone’s Award Winning debut novel Artichoke Hearts (2011) Sita’s stories have been nominated for the Carnegie Medal and the UKLA Book Award. She has an MA in Arts Education and has worked widely in theatre and education with diverse communities to mentor young voices. Sita co-created and scripted a celebrated theatre production inspired by Shaun Tan’s graphic novel The Arrival (2013). Her most recent YA novel When Shadows Fall was shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal (2023). Sita was shortlisted for the Ruth Rendell Literacy Award (2023). Sita has been Book Trust Writer in Residence, is Associate Lecturer in Children’s and YA Literature at Goldsmiths University and is Writer in Residence at Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants. Sita is a Royal Literary Fellow and a Fellow of The Society of Authors and an Honorary Member of the Youth Libraries Group.

Keith Jarrett

Keith is a writer, educator, and international poetry slam champion. He published the collection Selah in 2017 and has been widely anthologised with work comprising poetry, fiction, and essays. He has appeared on the BAFTA-winning show Life & Rhymes, and in documentaries.

Keith has judged the Foyle Young Poets Award, the Polari Prize, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and others. He was selected for the International Literary Showcase as one of 10 outstanding UK-based LGBT writers. He holds a PhD from Birkbeck and was awarded the Bloomsbury Studentship. Keith teaches at New York University in London, and is a Poetry Society trustee.

Carol Atherton

Carol Atherton has taught English since 1996, and is currently Head of English at Spalding Grammar School in Lincolnshire. She has written widely on the teaching of English at A Level, and is co-author, with Gary Snapper and Andrew Green, of Teaching English Literature 16-19 (Routledge, 2013). Her book Reading Lessons (Penguin Fig Tree, 2024) explores the relationships we have with the books we read in school, inviting us to take a fresh look at the novels, plays and poems we studied as teenagers and making a passionate case for the importance of literature within our education system.

Peter Kahn

Peter Kahn has taught poetry in over sixty schools from Hackney to Lambeth to Walthamstow to Chicago to South Carolina to Ohio. He created the Spoken Word program at Oak Park and River Forest High School, where he taught for 28 years, with work showcased in Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School (Penguin Young Readers). He has appeared on PBS NewsHour, NPR, BBC radio and the docu-series, America to Me. A founding member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, he has twice been a commended poet in the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition and was runner-up in the 2019 NCTE and Penguin Random House Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry. Peter co-founded the London Teenage Poetry Slam and, as a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, founded the Spoken Word Education Training Programme. Along with Patricia Smith and Ravi Shankar, he edited The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks. His debut collection, Little Kings, is published by Nine Arches Press, with poems in the Guardian and Forward Book of Poetry. National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes writes, 'Peter Kahn is the kind of reader of poetry, teacher of poetry, and poet who makes the world easier for other readers, teachers and poets.'