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BIOGRAPHY


Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British author and poet of Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage. He is a Malika’s Poetry Kitchen member, National Poetry Day ambassador and LGBT+ History Month patron. Dean was listed as one of the most influential LGBTQIA+ people in the UK by the Independent on Sunday and his books have been praised by the likes of Bernardine Evaristo, Benjamin Zephaniah and Malorie Blackman. 


Dean’s debut poetry collection, I Am Nobody’s Nigger (The Westbourne Press, 2013), was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. His debut young-adult novel in verse, The Black Flamingo (Hodder Children’s Books, 2019), won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award, CILIP Carnegie Shadowers Choice Award, West Sussex School Librarians’ Amazing Book Awards, What Kids are Reading Quiz Writers’ Choice Award and was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Reader Award, CILIP Carnegie Medal, Jhalak Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and The Bookseller’s YA Book Prize. Dean’s poems have been highly commended by the Forward Prizes for Poetry and shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. His poetry collection, There is (still) love here, explores acceptance, queer joy and the power of unapologetically being yourself and fully embracing who you are. He has also been commissioned to write poems for BBC World Service, Dazed & Confused, Keats House Museum, National Portrait Gallery, National Theatre of Scotland, Tate Britain and Tate Modern. His writing has been published in over 50 anthologies, magazines and journals, including the instant #1 New York Times bestseller Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood (Delacorte Press, 2021). 


Dean holds an MA Writer/Teacher from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA Philosophy & English from the University of Sussex. He has over a decade of experience facilitating poetry workshops in schools, colleges and universities, as well as for companies and organisations, such as The Anne Frank Trust UK, Apple, Apples and Snakes, Arvon Foundation, Body & Soul, the British Council, the British Library, the British Museum, the National Literacy Trust, New Writing South, Poetry School, The Poetry Society, The Proud Trust, Roundhouse, Scottish BPOC Writers Network, Scottish Book Trust, Scottish Poetry Library, Tate Britain and Tate Modern. 


His first picture book, Confetti, was published by Hachette Children’s Group in January 2024 and his first work of adult non-fiction, Person Unlimited, will be published by Canongate in Spring 2024. Dean lives in London and is represented by Gyamfia Osei at Andrew Nurnberg Associates. 


PUBLISHING 


YA novels in verse: 


Picture book: 


Poetry  collections:  


Anthologies: 


Magazines and journals: 


POETRY FILMS 



MEMBERSHIPS