Alexandria Animba likes drawing, cooking, coconut iced lattes, animals, hanging out with her friends, going to the beach, foraging, getting the bus and listening to music. Some of her favourite musicians are Tay-K, Dorothy Ashby, Chief Keef and BoofPaxkMooky. She is a Creative Producer, Tour Manager and co-admin of the meme account @yourenottheguy2
Alfie Watt is from London and has been writing poetry for ten years. She works as a medical writer, and when not putting words together can most likely be found doing a crossword or playing piano.
Anastasia Vasileiou is a London-based writer, born in Ukraine and raised in Cyprus. She studied Journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has been published in the Financial Times, and other publications. In her spare time she contributes to Gut Feeling and can be found over-analysing on Medium and Substack. You can find her at @aakoz8 on most platforms!
barboring is a queer writer who likes pancakes and has issues with anxiety, SWERFs and toilet flush.
Beatrix Hart is a London-based poet, studying BA(hons) in English Literature. Her language is influenced by her father’s London accent and her mother’s unique understanding of English as a Polish woman. What captivates her as a writer is the distribution of poetic form. While she acknowledges that her approach to writing differs from other writers, she has no desire to distance herself from her own dialect. To Beatrix, the poet is neither the designer nor the prophet within the infinite labyrinth of a poem.
Bella Aleksandrova is a human. She cares about social engagement, collective making, and multidisciplinary collaboration. She writes about socioeconomic struggle, displacement, anti-speciesism and what it feels like to be alive. She loves talking to other humans. Get in touch at bella90021@gmail.com
Bella Nazzari is a creative improviser based between California and New York. She was introduced to Gut Feeling during her time in London in the Fall of 2022. Her current focus is meditation and relaxation through creation, using it as a means to unwind and cleanse conscious thought.
Ben Heath is an actor and writer originally from Devon. He loves writing love stories and romantic poetry. In his free time you will find him having a boogie at a party, taking photographs and eating lots of chocolate.
Born in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, Brodie Rake is a writer, filmmaker, and founder of the multimedia event space Wrld Bldr. Having cemented himself firmly in London’s poetry scene, becoming a regular member of Gut Feeling, Gobjaw, and Blue Shout collectives, he hopes to forge a path into writing novels and directing feature films.
Charlie Hawksfield is a visual artist and writer. He ran Wells Projects; an artist-run, non-profit project space in Battersea, from a disused nightclub on Wandsworth Road between 2018 and 2021. He has been published in Fieldnotes Journal, The Irish Literary Review, Ariadne’s Thread and Sluice. He writes for Floor Magazine and recently curated a four-person performance show in an abandoned squash court facility in Sydenham. Other projects include the Folly Building Workshops and Stymingo Sessions. See more at www.charliehawksfield.com
When asked to provide biographical notes Chris Sayers was somewhat uncooperative: “Everything I write is basically autobiographical with just the right amount of obfuscation. I am a tiger with broken teeth and retracted claws. I am a houseplant that chain smokes when the weather changes. I am obsessed with how the past lives in imperfect memory. I am an old student, maybe an anarchist, maybe a humanist but I don’t wanna be guilty by association. Everything else just itches like coarse wool.”
Elida Silvey is a self taught Mexican-American writer and poet living in London, UK. She self published two poetry collections, Home in Limbo and Nothings, and is a staff writer for Sunstroke Magazine. Her work has been published in Spectra Poets, Soft Qrtly, Horizon Magazine and other small press publications. Her work often focuses on the mundane and everyday to express large topics such as love and identity. You can follow her work via www.elidasilvey.com or IG @elida.silvey
Elizabeth Bailey is a writer, researcher and programmer. Her research explores distinctions between class and taste through the lens of rural traditions and craft practices. Her countryside upbringing is woven into all aspects of her work: unravelling idealised depictions of rurality while celebrating the ordinary. Elizabeth develops the programme at Staffordshire St project space in Peckham. Her writing has appeared in Food& magazine, King’s Literary Journal and been performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She also runs Folk Club, exploring Albion’s folklore.
Ella Monnerat is not fun at parties. You will find them by the door, about to leave, probably holding a book or checking their emails. In fact, they’d really like it if you emailed. Send your thoughts on this book or recommendations or a random article or job opportunities. They write and edit and do some other stuff too. It’s ella.monnerat.p@gmail.com
Fabian Panaetache used to write poetry but has now focused his entire writing energy into a project entitled “when I have left from you, my dear” inspired from personal and gathered experiences of being a former Eastern Bloc migrant in London. He works in art and culture and manages a small curating platform called Non-Resident Alien.
Originally from Manchester, George Forbes is an aspiring playwright living in South East London. They specialise in writing angry, political poems, almost always, about their distaste for men.
Georgia Grace Nolan is an emerging writer of bloody and rotten poetry currently studying English Literature and Creative Writing in Brighton. Since working with Gut Feeling she has performed her poetry for Wrld Bldr and the sky has not fallen – yet.
Gian Singh Sanghera-Warren is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily works with movement. Their practice is informed by notions of memory, documentation and archivism alongside tactile sensation and intimacy. Over the past year, Gian has been exploring the use of machine learning software as an extension of the embodied archive and a choreographic tool, producing text and visuals with AI tools that have informed the development of performance scores. Gian’s contribution to this anthology is an initial experiment with this collaborative writing approach.
Graham Callison is 27 years old, currently working as an English teacher in the borough of Croydon. He was raised in Glasgow and spent three years living in Tokyo working as an EFL teacher before relocating to London with his wife, who he met while living there. He hopes to leave the UK to become a fully fledged International School teacher in the near future.
Harper Walton is a writer of poetry, prose and personal essays based in London. They were born in Bath and grew up in the West Country. They studied English Literature at Queen Mary, a masters in Creative Writing from the Paris School of Arts and Culture, and will begin a PhD in September at Royal Holloway which focuses on experimental trans memoirs. Get in touch at Instagram: @harperwalton_ or Email: harperwalton98@gmail.com
Jordan Benoit Minga (b. 2001, London UK) is an interdisciplinary Artist, Poet and Tinkerer. Jordan is advocate for young people and neurodiversity. His artwork reflects his lived experience. Jordan comes from the lived experience of being a young carer for his older brother. His work expresses vibes of self care as well as community care, understanding and introspection over the quality of our relationships.
Kaisa Saarinen is a former feral farmgirl in London. Her first collection of poetry and short fiction, Voideuse, was published by Feral Dove in May 2022. Her debut novel, Weather Underwater, was published by Bellows Press in May 2023.
Lola Gillies-Creasey is an artist, comedian, and occasional private investigator. They were born in London and grew up in Stroud. Their placenta is buried beneath a tree in Victoria Park. Lola’s work uses humour to explore power and identity. They have performed at gay bars and cabaret nights, and exhibited at the RA Summer Exhibition 2022. Lola studied Arabic and History at SOAS in London, and An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine. They briefly pursued a career in an office.
Like most first generation Russian immigrants with mummy issues, Nat Demarchuk writes poems on adolescence, childhood trauma and motherhood. Although her work may be difficult to access at times, it plays easily between the authentic and surreal, and encourages every reader to look between the lines.
Nicola Malcolm is coming out as a poet. Her parents have been very accepting about it.
Nik Cousin’s calling was always going to be poetry or welding, yet he can’t tell the difference anymore.
Obi Saiq is a writer and painter from Afghanistan who grew up in East London. His work mainly focuses on class, race, displacement, postcolonialism, exploitation and alienation. His hope is to get people, especially working class individuals, to reconsider their relationship to the system in which they live.
Owen Fortunato Brakspear lives in London, sometimes writes.
Poor Mother (not a real mother) semi-regularly births words and sentences, weans them in domestic chaos and feeds them with their absolutely god-awful set of genes. They grow mouths to envision and teeth to walk on, then leave home in a cacophony of dysphoric snapshots - formed and walking, but in contradictions. Poor Mother lives in Brixton Hill.
Ray Veselý is very normal and doing fine.
Regina Avendaño Trueba is a Mexican poet based in London. Her work has concentrated on writing as well as on human rights, focusing on the rights of migrants and refugees, as well as climate justice. Her writing tries to look at the elements of identity and emotion in wider social explorations, as well as interpersonal relationships and mental health. Regina is also the co-founder of the political and artistic collective The Elegists www.theelegists.com
Rowan Kiffin-Murray discovered his passion for writing poetry in May 2022 after attending an inspiring poetry workshop. It immediately resonated with him, as he found joy in expressing complex emotions and sharing the lessons he’s learned. He draw inspiration from talented storytellers like George the Poet, J. Cole, and Sade Adu, who excel in conveying their narratives across different mediums.
Shannon Fox writes poetry as a way to understand herself and her place in the world around her. When she doesn’t have the energy to do this, she’s training to be a psychologist to do it to others instead.
Hailing from the Himalayas, Simran Thapliyal has dedicated most of her adult life fighting against gender based violence and human trafficking across the India-Nepal border. She has also served trans and indigenous communities, women and young girls in poverty to improve access to livelihood and education across north India. To combat the fatigues of advocacy and activism, she is pursuing an MA in Gender, Media and Culture from Goldsmiths. A writer and poet by wounds, when she writes for herself she writes on the disparaging struggles of doing brown womanhood.
Siri Christiansen is a journalist and essay writer from Sweden.
Slow Pavlakis tends to find most of their writings to be half thought-out ramblings of somehow intrinsic inclinations. They have come to view the work-in-process as something greater than the finished product – raw, beautiful, and troubling. With all its silence, laughs, and catches in the throat, Gut Feeling allows a glimpse into the unpolished complexities of the faces around us. These are the ones that she knows too well but not at all.
Stan Owens is a poet and playwright from Leeds, currently studying English with Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Having worked with Leeds Young Authors and the Leeds Playhouse from his early teens, both his poetry and playwriting have been evolving for many years now. Stan says “working with Gut Feeling has given me more opportunity and space to continue developing who I am as an artist and I only hope to keep creating.”
Tara Bauković is a born and raised Londoner, writer and bartender. They enjoy several pleasures in life - on a typical night, they can be found at the pub playing cards. ‘At Nerin Cove’ forms part of a zine they made on Montenegro, the country of their father’s origin, which explores their relationship with the culture and the complications that arise when one is distant from a place called home, serving as a kind of catharsis; a thread between person and land.
Tarun Gidwani is a PhD student in philosophy at King’s College in London. He is also an activist; working in the areas of climate justice, fairness in access to healthcare and inter-ethnic harmony. He has written on these issues for publications such as The Guardian, openDemocracy and New Internationalist.
Tiger writes stuff, but not often enough.
Yuna Goda is a Tokyo/London based designer and writer who creates works about home, language, and multi-cultural identity. She studied BA Design at Goldsmiths, University of London as an Ezoe Memorial Recruit Foundation Scholar, and is currently studying MA Writing at the Royal College of Art. Her works include zines, films, and prop-design, alongside many other multidisciplinary outputs. You can find her on Instagram @yuna.goda