WritersMosaic Presents: Abolition and the Atlantic Slave Trade
Writer Bonnie Greer and historian SI Martin explore Britain’s role in the Atlantic slave trade for the launch of Abolition by WritersMosaic founding editor, Gabriel Gbadamosi.
Sea shanties from Abolition recalling English maritime experience will be performed by musicians John Dipper and Dave Malkin, with a screen montage of images of the English slave trade designed by Miss Ohio.
Bonnie Greer is an American-British playwright, novelist, critic and broadcaster, who has lived in the UK since 1986. She has appeared as a panellist on television programmes such as Newsnight Review and Question Time and has served on the boards of several leading arts organisations, including the British Museum, Royal Opera House and London Film School. She is Vice President of the Shaw Society, former Chancellor of Kingston University and in July 2022 she was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
S.I. Martin was born in Bedford and has worked as a journalist for The Voice and Bulletin. He is the author of a novel, Incomparable World (1996), which tells the story of three Black exiles living in 18th-century London; and a non-fiction title, Britain's Slave Trade (1999), published to accompany a television series screened on Channel 4. S. I. Martin lives in South London where he works as a researcher and writer of Black history. His children's novel, Jupiter Williams, tells the tale of a boy who lives in the African Academy in Clapham, London, in 1800. His latest book is Jupiter Amidships (2009)
Gabriel Gbadamosi is an Irish and Nigerian poet, playwright and critic. His London novel Vauxhall (Telegram, 2013) won the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize and Best International Novel at the Sharjah Book Fair. His plays include Stop and Search (Arcola Theatre), Eshu’s Faust (Jesus College, Cambridge), Hotel Orpheu (Schaubühne, Berlin), Shango (DNA, Amsterdam) and for radio The Long, Hot Summer of ’76 (BBC Radio 3) which won the first Richard Imison Award. He presented BBC Radio 3’s flagship arts and ideas programme Night Waves.
WritersMosaic is a division of the Royal Literary Fund.