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Celebrating creativity, connection and the power of words
Leeds Beckett University's Professor Emily Zobel Marshall has been recognised for her outstanding contribution to the arts with a prestigious award from That Name Woman.
The organisation - a BAME-led collective dedicated to empowering women and girls from global majority backgrounds - honoured Emily with the Creative Women in the Arts award, celebrating those whose artistic work has transformed the cultural landscape, particularly in STEAM-related fields. The accolade acknowledges Emily's inspiring blend of creativity, scholarship and advocacy, and her commitment to reshaping narratives through literature and education.
A new collection for a new season
Emily's latest poetry collection, Other Wild (Peepal Tree Press, 2025), was launched on 11 October at Waterstones Leeds. The book has already been widely praised for its vitality and vision. Renowned nature writer Robert Macfarlane describes it as:
"A glorious, various collection: embedded and embodied in the living world, zinging throughout with love, joy, passion, loss and profusion. Rivers flow and forests grow through it; memory here is made as much of matter as well as metaphor. The whole book pulses."
Other Wild explores kinship, folklore and the deep relationships between people and the natural world - themes that speak to Emily's interdisciplinary expertise, her role as a Mountain Leader, and her ongoing work at the intersection of literature, ecology and cultural identity.
Championing bookshops and the joy of reading
The launch coincided with National Bookshop Day, a fitting occasion for Emily to be named a Bookshop Ambassador. As part of a month-long national campaign, she championed the importance of independent bookshops and the role they play in local communities. Emily shared insights on her new collection and the power of literature through interviews with The Yorkshire Post, The Cambrian News and BBC Radio Leeds.
Emily onstage at Waterstones bookshop
Taking the stage at the UK's biggest poetry festival
Adding to an exceptional month, Emily was invited to perform at the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival in Bradford - the UK's largest poetry and performance festival. Over the three-day event, she read from Other Wild at four separate performances, captivating audiences with her lyrical voice and cultural storytelling. A selection of her readings will be broadcast on BBC Radio over the coming year.
Inspiring through words and action
Professor Zobel Marshall's achievements this autumn are a testament to her creative energy and influence across the arts. Whether through poetry, performance, or her academic work at Leeds Beckett University's School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Emily continues to inspire new generations of writers, readers and thinkers - celebrating creativity as a force for connection, empowerment and change.
You can catch Professor Zobel Marshall reading from 'Other Wild' on 22 November at the Kendal Mountain Festival.
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
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Professor Emily Zobel Marshall
Emily's research is informed by postcolonial theory and includes examinations of constructions of identity, race and racial politics and Caribbean carnival cultures. She is particularly interested in forms of cultural resistance and cross-cultural fertilisation in the face of colonialism.
Emily is an expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields, including her books Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (2012, University of the West Indies Press) and American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit (2019, Rowman and Littlefield). She is also a published poet with two poetry collections published by Peepal Tree Press, Bath of Herbs (2019) and Other Wild (2025).
Emily is a qualified Mountain Leader and a Black Girls Hike Leader with research interests and publications in decolonising the countryside and The Black Outdoors.
