biog


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summary biog:

Bidisha Mamata is a broadcaster, journalist and presenter. She specialises in international human rights, social justice and the arts and culture and offers political analysis, arts critique and cultural diplomacy tying these interests together. She writes for the main UK broadsheets (currently as an arts critic and columnist for The Observer and The Guardian) and presents and commentates heavily for BBC TV and radio, ITN, CNN, ViacomCBS for Channel 5 and Sky News, where she has been a regular on the weekend breakfast show since 2016. Her fifth book,  Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London (2015), is based on her outreach work in UK prisons, refugee charities and detention centres. She currently presents the Hello Happiness audio series for Wellcome Collection and is presenting for the arts series In The Studio for the BBC World Service, broadcasting in March 2023. Her latest publication is an essay called The Future of Serious Art (Nov 2020).

She also a multimedia artist working mainly in film and stills, as well as painting and works on paper. Her first piece to be exhibited was in the group show 000 zerozerozero at Whitechapel Gallery. Her first short film, An Impossible Poison, received its London premier in March 2018. It has been highly acclaimed, widely screened and selected for multiple international film festivals. Her latest film series, Aurora, ran from 2020-2023. Her most recent exhibited works on paper have been a large mural and two other large pieces for permanent display for the Vital Arts 100 NHS Rooms  project and a series of pieces for the Art On A Postcard Winter Auction, both in 2022, as well as the upcoming Art on a Postcard auction for International Women's Day in March 2023. Her stills are in numerous private collections internationally. 


More detailed breakdown below.....


TV, radio, film 

Bidisha is a presenter for BBC TV, Radio 3, Radio 4 and the World Service. She also broadcasts regularly on politics and current affairs for Channel 4 News and Sky News, where she has been a regular since 2015. She was a regular guest on BBC Two's Newsnight Review (later The Review Show), Sunday Morning Live and The Big Questions. For BBC Radio 4 she contributes frequently to Saturday Review and Woman's Hour, both of which she has guest presented, and Front Row, and has presented Archive on Four, Heart and Soul (featuring Anne Rice and Imtiaz Dharker) and various other documentaries and series. Standalone documentaries have included Texting Andy Warhol, on the role of text in art (R4); An Unofficial Iris, a study of Iris Murdoch's work and legacy (R4); The Red Book, an investigation into Jung's Red Book (R3); and The Countertenor, a highly acclaimed exploration of the countertenor voice for Radio 4. Bidisha was the regular presenter of BBC Radio 3's arts and ideas programme, Night Waves. On the World Service she guest presented the books programme The Word and was the regular presenter of the flagship arts show, The Strand. As of 2015 she has also been a regular Sky News commentator on social justice issues and the refugee crisis, and since 2016 has been a fortnightly newspaper reviewer for the Sky News breakfast show on Saturday mornings. Random extra stuff bullet pointed below:
newspapers, magazines, books

Bidisha began writing for arts magazines i-D, Oyster, Volume, Dazed and Confused and the NME at 14. She signed her first book deal, with HarperCollins, at 16, in a deal brokered by Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown. Her first novel, Seahorses, was published to commercial and critical success in May 1997 when she was 18. During this time she also had regular opinion columns in The Big Issue magazine (monthly, 1995-1997) and The Independent (weekly, 1998). She was then a contributing editor of the women's magazine Sibyl (1998-9) and multicultural style magazine 2nd Generation (1996-1998) and edited and published the arts magazine The Stealth Corporation. Bidisha's second novel, the thriller Too Fast to Live, was published in 2000 when she was 21. Her third book, the bestselling travel memoir Venetian Masters, was published in February 2008.

She writes for The Guardian and the Observer (full archive here), the Financial Times, Mslexia, New Statesman, New Humanist, The List, the Times Literary Supplement, Sight and Sound, BBC Arts, Poetry Review and various publications internationally. From the end of 2010 to early 2012 she had a weekly column in The Guardian called Bidisha's Thought for The Day. In 2013 Johns Hopkins University granted her an International Reporting Project fellowship to report on global health and development for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bidisha's fourth book, out May 2012, was the acclaimed reportage Beyond the Wall, published by Seagull/Chicago University Press. For more details click here. Her poetry has been published by Wasafiri magazine, Seagull Books, Saqi Books, English PEN and Young MWA magazine and performed at numerous venues including the Tower of London and the latest news is....
  • 5th book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London, published on 3rd March 2015 by Seagull/Chicago University Press. Based on Bidisha's outreach work with asylum seekers and refugees.
  • The Future of Serious Art, published 12th November 2020, is a bound, essay length manifesto/memoir commissioned by Tortoise Media, looking at the future of the arts. 
  • For a clear list of books I've written and contributed to, click here. I write fiction, non fiction and poetry. The most fun stuff recently has been three short fiction anthologies for Comma Press.

arts and media prize judging
  • 2008 Time Out Write Up Your Street short story prize, alongside Chris Mead, Tobias Hill and Amy Lamé
  • 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction, alongside Kira Cochrane, Martha Lane Fox, Fi Glover and Sarah Churchwell.
  • 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for literature, alongside Claire Allfree and Maura Dooley
  • 2010 BBC4 World Cinema Awards, alongside Christopher Hamilton, Aamir Khan and Sophie Fiennes
  • 2012 and 2013 Bristol Short Story Prize, as part of Bristol Shortstoryville. For more details click here
  • 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 Polari Prize for debut gay and lesbian literature alongside Suzi Feay, Paul Burston, Tom Storey-Scott and Rachel Holmes. For more details click here.
  • 2012 Comment Awards for journalists and commentators.
  • 2013 Bristol Festival of Ideas Best Book of Ideas Prize. For details click here.
  • 2013 Spread the Word short story prize alongside Tania Hershman, Courttia Newland and Sue Lawther. For details click here.
  • 2013 and 2014 Somerset Maugham prize, alongside William Fiennes, Ben Markovits and Naomi Alderman
  • 2014 Wasafiri New Writing Prize alongside Susheila Nasta, Inua Ellams and Monique Roffey
  • 2015 One World Media broadcasting prize for reporting on refugee issues.
  • 2016 Koestler Foundation award for fiction written by offenders and ex-offenders
  • 2017 Koestler Foundation award for best short story and best poetry collection by prisoners.
  • 2018 JQ Wingate Prize, details here. Alongside Toby Lichtig, Maureen Kendler and Amanda Craig.
  • 2018 Forward Prizes for poetry, chair of judges. Details here. 
  • 2019 Collyer Bristow Prize for debut fiction. Other judges included Suzi Feay and Houman Barekat.
  • 2020 JQ Wingate Prize judge alongside Anne Sebba and AD Miller.
  • 2020, 2021 and 2022 Koestler Foundation award judge for non fiction written by offenders and ex offenders
  • 2022 Chair of Judges for The Moore Prize for literature about human rights.

writer in residence/very random fun stuff
2010 - Southbank London Literature Festival writer in residence
2011 - Birds Eye View Film Festival writer in residence
2011 - 2012 and 2015 English PEN residency working with refugee and migrant centres in London and working in women's prisons
2013 - International Reporting Project Fellow focusing on international development, in a project run by Johns Hopkins University and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
2014 - A stint in Beijing from August until November as Deputy Editor at Time Out Beijing
2016 - Guest Selector at Edinburgh International Book Festival, producing and presenting a series of events about writing and asylum, refuge and exile.
2017 and 2018 - Writer in Residence for the City of Stories residency for London writers.
2018 - Guest Editor, Asylum issue of Wasafiri Journal of International Literature; writer in residence, Wasafiri magazine (details here). 
2021 - early 2022 - Writer on The Bloc writer in residence appointed by Writing on the Wall festival, teaching, lecturing, workshopping and mentoring emerging non fiction writers.
2022-2023 - Genesis Emerging Writers' Programme mentor, non fiction. Other mentors include Charlotte Mendelson, Anne Sebba and Philip Hensher.


patronage/trusteeship/the great and the good

2011-  Patron of the SI Leeds Literary Prize.
2012-2018 - Patron of the PANDA performing arts network until its closure.
2012 - Matron of the London Feminist Film Festival.
2013 - 2022 Trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation (full term served - 9 years!)
2016 - Nominated in the Literature category of the Eastern Eye Arts Culture and Theatre awards
2019 - Nominated in the Media category of the Natwest Asian Women of Achievement Awards.
2019 - 2021 Trustee of the Forward Arts Foundation for poetry. 


education 

Bidisha Mamata was born in London and educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls. She studied Old and Middle English at Oxford University, where she was a college scholar. She ran away from her first day pursuing a PhD in Old and Medieval Literature at Oxford University then gained an MSc in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Economic History and Moral and Political Philosophy at the London School of Economics. 

....and that's it!
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