Aaron Kent

Director / Editor

Aaron Kent is a working-class writer and award-winning publisher from Cornwall, now living in Wales. His debut poetry collection, Angels the Size of Houses, is out with Shearsman, and he was awarded the Awen medal from the Bards of Cornwall for his poetry pamphlet The Last Hundred. Gillian Clarke said, of his poetry, “Every poem is a dizzy word-dazzle, a dance of images, expressing a real life of work, babies, love and loss.” Andrew McMillan called it “Poetry that vibrates on its own frequency, and invites the reader into its own surreal soundscapes.” JH Prynne called his work “Unicorn Flavoured” and Vahni Capildeo said “Aaron Kent’s pages made me experience, for the first time ever in my reading, the spaces between words as rips in fabric that let skin show through in its bruised and tender luminosity”.

Agent: Kate Rizzo @ Greene&Heaton

Charlie Baylis

Assistant Editor

Charlie Baylis is from Nottingham. He is the Editor of Anthropocene and the Chief Editorial Advisor to Broken Sleep Books. His poetry has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize. His most recent publication is Santa Lucía (Invisible Hand Press).He spends his spare time completely adrift of reality.

Emma Kennedy

Administrator

Emma is the administrator of Broken Sleep Books, and ensures the daily running of the press goes smoothly. Emma likes to read tarot, and immerse herself in all things witchy, while making sure the Broken Sleep orders go out with a quirky sticker on the envelope.

Cathleen Allyn Conway

Assistant Prose Editor

Cathleen Allyn Conway is a poet, journalist, and student at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she is completing her doctoral studies on intersections of Sylvia Plath and the Gothic in experimental poetics. She publishes scholarship and poems. She is very enthusiastic about fonts. Originally from Chicago, she lives in south London.

Day Mattar

Marketing Assistant

Day Mattar is a cheeky queer poet and performer from Liverpool. They are the co-founder of Queer Bodies poetry collective, and facilitate poetry workshops with various art organisations in the UK. Their poetry pamphlet, Springing from the Pews, was published May 2021 with Broken Sleep Books. Day’s poems come from the body, they use poetry as a tool to explore links between the psychological and the physical, the somatic and the sensual. Can a poem make you jump? Is your heart beating faster? Read more of their poems here: https://daymattar.wixsite.com/poet

Stuart McPherson

Editorial Advisor

Stuart McPherson is a prize-winning poet from the UK. Recent poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog Magazine, Bath Magg, Poetry Wales, and Anthropocene. The pamphlet Waterbearer was published in December 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. A debut full length collection Obligate Carnivore was published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2022. In October 2022, Stuart was the winner of the Ambit Annual Poetry Competition.

Suna Afshan

Editorial Advisor

Suna Afshan is a poet and freelance editor from the Midlands. She is co-founder and Editor at Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, and Director of Pallina Press. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Birmingham City University. In 2018 she was awarded with the University's Mercian Prize. Suna’s work is concerned with the apotheosis of poetry, and her 2020 micro-pamphlet Belladonna was published with Legitimate Snack. 

Jennifer Edgecombe

Editorial Advisor

Jennifer Edgecombe grew up in Cornwall and now lives on the Kent coast and works in publishing. Her debut poetry pamphlet The Grief of the Sea was published by Broken Sleep Books in June 2020. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Ambit, Caught by the River, Lighthouse, PN Review, and Wild Court. 

Jazmine Linklater

Editorial Advisor

Jazmine Linklater has published the pamphlets Toward Passion According (Zarf, 2017) and Découper, Coller (Dock Road Press, 2018). She is a co-founder of the queer feminist reading series, No Matter, in Manchester, and in 2018-19 was a Poetry London mentee with Vahni Capildeo. A third pamphlet, Figure a Motion, was published by Guillemot Press in September 2020.

Gurdeep Mattu

Editorial Advisor

Gurdeep Mattu is a publisher and the author of Sons and Fascination (Paperbooks, 2011) as well as several pamphlets.  He works as an Editorial Project Manager at the British Standards Institution (BSI).  His poetic influences include Walt Whitman, H.D. and William Carlos Williams.  Gurdeep is working on his second novel and can be found blogging at gurdeepmattu.wordpress.com

Jack Warren

Editorial Advisor

Jack Warren is an environmentalist and poet from the South West. He has worked as a labourer and bartender for most of his career however he currently works in conservation. He holds an MA in Poetics from the University of York, an MSc in Applied Ecology from the University of Gloucestershire, and his poetry can be found in Magma, Anomaly, the Cardiff Review and others.