Pumpkin Grumpkin

Grace Nichols

Grace Nichols was born in Guyana and has lived in Britain since 1977. Her first collection of poetry, I Is A Long-Memoried Woman, won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Among her other books for adults are the popular The Fat Black Woman’s Poems. Her children’s books include The Poet Cat, Paint Me a Poem (awarded the Children's Poetry Book-Shelf Best Single Author’s Collection) and Cosmic Disco.

She has edited anthologies including Poetry Jump Up; with her poet partner, John Agard, she edited collections such as Under The Moon and Over the Sea, which won a CLPE Award. She is among the poets on the current GCSE syllabus and received the Cholmondeley Award in 2000 as well as an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Hull. Her latest adult book is The Insomnia Poems.

John Agard

John Agard (born 21 June 1949 in British Guiana) is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in Britain. In 2012, he was selected for the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. 

Agard grew up in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana). John wrote his first poetry when he was in sixth-form, and left school in 1967. Leaving school in 1967, he taught the languages he had studied and worked in a local library. His father settled in London and Agard moved to Britain with his partner Grace Nichols in 1977, settling in Ironbridge, Shropshire. 

His collections for young readers include The Young Inferno, a teenage spin on Dante's Inferno, Einstein, The Girl Who Hated Maths and Hello H20, both illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura. His adult collections include Alternative Anthem and his latest, Playing the Ghost Of Maimonides. His first non-fiction, entitled Book, tells the history of the book in the voice of the book. His awards include the Casa de las Americas Poetry Prize, the Paul Hamlyn Award and the 2012 Queen's Gold Medal for poetry. He lives in Sussex.

Satoshi Kitamura

Satoshi Kitamura is both an author and illustrator. He was born in 1956 in Tokyo. He says that when he was young he read comics and admits that these have had a great influence on his style. He says he was also influenced by anything visual from a tin of sardines to the fine art of the East and the West. He was not trained as an artist, but at the age of 19 began to do commercial work. He moved to London in 1979 and worked mainly designing greeting cards. He started illustrating for Andersen Press in 1981. At this time he had an exhibition of his work at the Neal Street Gallery in Covent Garden, which Klaus Flugge visited and showed him the text of Angry Arthur.

Angry Arthur, written by Hiawyn Oram, was published in 1982 to great acclaim, winning the Mother Goose Award in 1983 and the Japanese Picture Book Award. In 1989, UFO diary was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize, an award he later went on to win for Me and My Cat, which was also shortlisted for the Kurt Mashler Award. In 2006, Satoshi’s collaboration with Colin McNaughton, Once Upon an Ordinary School Day, won The Japan Picture Book Award for best translated book. Satoshi’s book, Millie’s Marvellous Hat, was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Award in 2010.