The London Library has announced its 2025/26 Emerging Writers Programme cohort and among the 40 selected are two writers with African roots: Zimbabwe’s Janice Mamukwa and British-Somali playwright Hadsan Mohamud.
Selected anonymously from a field of over 1950 applicants, a record-breaking number, by a panel of judges including poet Rishi Dastidar (Neptune’s Projects, Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different); children’s author, novelist, scriptwriter and songwriter Maz Evans (Who Let the Gods Out, Vi Spy); novelist and short story writer Irenosen Okojie(Nudibranch, Curandera); non-fiction author, photographer and broadcaster Johny Pitts (Afropean, Home is Not a Place); screenwriter and director Benjamin Ross (The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, Poppy Shakespeare); playwright and performer Chris Thorpe (The Shape of Pain, A Family Business) and C&W literary agents Emma Finn and Lucy Luck, this year’s participants include early-career writers working across fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama.
The programme offers a year’s free membership to the Library, plus writing support and development opportunities.
Janice Mamukwa, a Zimbabwean writer has an MSt in Creative Writing from Oxford and is completing a PGCert in Teaching Creative Writing at Cambridge. Her work explores racial boundaries, the Black female body, mother-daughter relationships and self-image, and the immigrant experience. She is currently working on a novel.
Hadsan Mohamud, based in northwest London, is a British-Somali actor and writer. With a degree in Psychology, her work primarily explores themes of mental health, identity and belonging. She recently had a sold-out reading of her play, Keep Moving Forward at Omnibus Theatre and is developing her new play Crush as part of Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab.
The Emerging Writers Programme runs from July 2025 to June 2026.
Congratulations, Janice Mamukwa and Hadsan Mohamud!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
