Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian-British writer who has won acclaim as a children's author, poet, broadcaster and novelist. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks: eyes of a boy, lips of a man (1999), his début; M is for Madrigal (2004), a selection of seven jazz poems; and Ballast (2009), an imagination of the slave trade by balloon. His poem, ‘Tin Roof’, was selected for the Poems on the Underground initiative in 2007, followed by the poem ‘Barter,’ chosen from his first full collection The Makings of You ( Peepal Tree, 2010). Nii Ayikwei's novel, Tail of the Blue Bird (Jonathan Cape, 2009), hailed by the Financial Times as ‘a beautifully written fable… simple in form, but grappling with urgent issues,’ was lauded internationally, becoming a bestseller in Germany and notably winning France's two major prizes for translated fiction – Prix Baudelaire and Prix Laure Bataillon – in 2014. He is the author of two books for children under the name K.P. Kojo and is Senior Editor and publisher at flipped eye publishing. As a socio-cultural commentator and advocate for African writing, Nii Ayikwei has led forums internationally, has sat on discussion panels for BBC Radio, and he founded the African Writers’ Evening series.