Ashley Hickson-Lovence

Ashley Hickson-Lovence is the author of the novels The 392, Your Show and Wild East — overall winner of the East Anglian Book Awards 2024 and the YA winner of the Diverse Book Awards 2025. His poetry collection Why I Am Not a Bus Driver released with Bade Betty Press in 2025 includes the poem “Munster Road,” which was highly commended for Best Single Poem by the Forward Prize and was featured in the Forward Prize Book of Poetry 2026. Ashley has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia, and his nominations include the Black Excellence Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature 2023. His new novel About To Fall Apart will be published by Faber in April 2026, and his next YA verse novel Dead Ends will be released in August 2026.