Magma Board

Fahad Al-Amoudi is a writer and editor. He is the winner of the White Review Poets Prize 2022 and has been shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poets Prize. His work appears in The Poetry Review, Wasafiri and Mizna. His debut pamphlet, When The Flies Come, is published by ignitionpress.

David Floyd lives in London and is Managing Director of Social Spider CIC. His pamphlets are Protest (Hearing Eye, 2011) and War in the Playground (Hearing Eye, 2003).

Ella Frears is a poet and artist originally from Cornwall, now based in London. Her debut collection Shine, Darling (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.

Susannah Hart's debut collection Out of True won the Live Canon First Collection Prize in 2018. She won first prize in the 2019 National Poetry Competition and was commended in both the 2020 and 2022 competitions. Susannah has been a trustee of Magma since 2015.

Lisa Kelly is half Danish and has single-sided deafness from childhood mumps. Her first collection, A Map Towards Fluency (Carcanet 2019), was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize 2021. Her second collection, The House of the Interpreter (Carcanet 2023), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is learning British Sign Language and has a Signature level 6 qualification. She is co-editor of What Meets the Eye? The Deaf Perspective (Arachne Press 2021).

Aoife Lyall is the author of Mother, Nature (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), shortlisted for the Scottish First Book Award 2021. In 2020, she was awarded National Lottery funding through Creative Scotland to write her second poetry collection, The Day Before (Bloodaxe Books, 2024). Her work focuses on motherhood, lockdown, and emigration.

Fiona Moore’s first collection The Distal Point (HappenStance) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the 2019 T S Eliot and Seamus Heaney Prizes. She edited Magma 72, the Climate Change Issue.

Cheryl Moskowitz is a US born UK based poet, translator and novelist. Trained in dramatherapy and psychodynamic counselling she runs writing projects in various health-care, educational and community settings. Her most recent publication is the pamphlet Maternal Impression published by Against the Grain Poetry Press 2021.

Helen, a founder member of the Magma team, now lives in Fife. After an MFA in Creative Writing at St Andrews, her pamphlet, Briar Mouth, was published by Happenstance in 2018. She is a fundraiser for a Scottish charity supporting families who care for children who need help with speech, language and communication. Helen takes the lead for Magma on privacy and data protection.

Laurie Smith helped start Magma in 1994, has edited 10 issues, been Chair and is now Company Secretary.  He advises on the Let's Think in English programme at King's College London and teaches literature at the City Lit, central London.