Lemn Sissay OBE FRSL

Google “Lemn Sissay” and all the return hits will be about him.  There is only one person in the world named Lemn Sissay  

Awarded the 2024 Hay medal for poetry Lemn Sissay OBE FRSL  is also a playwright, memoirist, performer and broadcaster.  His latest book “Let The Light Pour In” is a Sunday Times Best Seller. The paperback comes out in 2025.  His autobiography My name is Why was a Number One Sunday Times Best Seller. In 2021 he helped select the work for Hold Still which also became a Sunday Times Bestseller.   His Theatre adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy is a text on The National Curriculum.  

In 2022 he was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. In September 2024 Sissay was made honorary fellow of Mansfield College Oxford and 2020 he became Honorary Fellow at Jesus College Cambridge. Lemn was named MBE for services to literature, awarded by The Queen at Buckingham Palace and then he was named OBE for services to Literature and Charity, awarded by King Charles at Windsor Castle in 2023.   He was chancellor of University of Manchester from 2015 to 2023.  

He is the only Guest Director of Brighton Festival two have been two years (2020 and 2021). In 2024 he was the curator of the first Ethiopia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024.  He has read poetry on stages throughout the world: from The Library of Congress in The United States to The National Theatre in Addis Ababa. From the Opera House of Dubai in The United Emirates to London Palladium in England.      

Sissay was the first poet commissioned to write for The Olympics in 2012. His Olympic poem  Spark Catchers is a  landmark poem on Queen Elizabeth Park today. His other landmark Poems are in Manchester London and Addis Ababa.  There have been a few BBC TV documentaries about his life the latest  is “The memory of me”.  Listen to his desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 or “Origin Stories” his series on Superheroes relating to the care system. His Channel Four Documentary “Superkids” was nominated for BAFTA, Broadcast and Grierson Awards.   

Lemn Sissay has received seven Honorary Doctorates at Universities throughout UK.. He is presently Honorary Bencher at The Inner Temple. He is Honorary Chair of creative writing at The University of Manchester.  Lemn was approached by The City of London and accepted Freedom of The City of London. To be approached in such a way is an honour which includes Nelson Mandela.   

He has been photographed by Steve McCurry, Rankin, Zoë Law  and Ethiopia’s greatest living photographer Aida Muluneh. A painting of Lemn is in The National Portrait gallery. He is trustee of The Foundling Museum under its new director Emma Ridgway and he is founding trustee of The Gold From The Stone Foundation which supports Christmas Dinners for Care Leavers on Christmas Day.