The Time is Always Now

Ekow Eshun is a British writer, curator, and broadcaster. Described as a 'cultural polymath' by The Guardian, he has been a trailblazing voice at the heart of creative culture in Britain for three decades. He was the first black editor of a major magazine in the UK with Arena, and the first black director of a major arts organisation, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in London. Eshun is the author of In the Black Fantastic (2022), Black Gold of the Sun (2005), nominated for the Orwell prize, and Africa State of Mind (2020), nominated for the Lucie Photo Book Prize.

British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the author of ten books and numerous writings that span the genres of fiction, verse fiction, short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, journalism, and radio and theatre drama. Bernardine's novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize 2019. She was the first black woman and black British person to win it in its 50-year history. Evaristo has received over 76 awards, nominations, fellowships and honours, and her books have been a Book of the Year sixty times. She was voted one of 100 Great Black Britons in 2020 and made the Black Powerlist 100 in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Canadian writer Esi Edugyan is the internationally bestselling author of Washington Black (2018), which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. It was chosen by both the New York Times and Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2018, and is being made into a Disney/Hulu limited series co-produced by Edugyan. Her other novels include The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (2004) and Half-Blood Blues (2011), shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2011. Edugyan is also the author of Out of the Sun: Essays at the Crossroads of Race (2022) and Dreaming of Elsewhere: Observations on Home (2014).

Professor Dorothy Price FBA is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art, in London. She is co-author of