Salena Godden
Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage based in London. In 2021 Canongate published her highly acclaimed debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death. It won The Indie Book Award for fiction and was the winner of The Peoples Book Prize 2022. It was also shortlisted for The British Book Awards and The Gordon Burn Prize.
Salena Godden's work has been widely anthologised and broadcast on BBC radio and TV and film. Her essay Shade was published in groundbreaking and award-wining anthology The Good Immigrant (Unbound). A short-story Blue Cornflowers was shortlisted for the 4th Estate and Guardian short story prize. She has had several volumes of poetry published including Under The Pier (Nasty Little Press, 2011) Fishing in the Aftermath: Poems 1994-2014 (Burning Eye Books, 2014) Pessimism is for Lightweights - 13 Pieces of Courage and Resistance (Rough Trade Books, 2018) and also a literary childhood memoir, Springfield Road (Unbound, 2014).
An extended hardback edition of Pessimism is for Lightweights - 30 Pieces of Courage and Resistance was published in February 2023 by Rough Trade Books. The poem Pessimism is for Lightweights is on permanent display at The Peoples History Museum, Manchester. Her poem ‘While Justice Waits’ was highly commended and published by The Forward Prize 2024. She has produced four studio albums to date, her solo poetry album LIVEwire (Nymphs and Thugs, 2016) was shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Prize.
Salena Godden is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of West Dean, Sussex. She is a Patron of Hastings Book Festival and Patron of LIVEwire Poetry — a new UK poetry organisation specialising in writer development and live events. A consistent supporter of the work of other poets, writers and artists, Salena Godden co-hosts and curates a monthly arts and culture radio show and podcast Roaring 20’s Radio for Soho Radio with art journalist Amah-Rose Abrams and poet Matt Abbott.
This year a new full poetry collection 'With Love, Grief and Fury' and literary memoir 'Springfield Road - A Poets Childhood Revisited' were launched together and published in May 2024 by Canongate. The eagerly anticipated 2nd new fiction novel set in the 'Mrs Death Misses Death' universe will be published also by Canongate in 2026.
Salena Godden is currently touring, find live dates and books and more at www.salenagodden.co.uk and linktree