Salena Godden

Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of mixed Jamaican-Irish heritage. Her debut novel, Mrs Death Misses Death, won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People's Book Prize, and was shortlisted at te British Book Awards and for the Gordon Burn Prize. Her most recent books include the literary childhood memoir, Springfield Road and poetry collections Pessimism is for Lightweights and With Love, Grief and Fury, which was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Award and received a Special Commendation from The Poetry Book Society. 'Dirty Old Men', published in WLGF, was highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize 2025 for Best Single Poem - Performed. Her work has been shortlisted for the 4thWrite Short Story Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, Jerwood Compton Foundation and the Bridport Poetry Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Patron of Hastings Book Festival and an Honorary Fellow of West Dean, Sussex.

salenagodden.co.uk | @salena.godden