Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. Her academic monograph, Stevie Smith and the Aphorism: Hard Language (Oxford University Press, 2022) won the MSA First Book Award and the University English Prize; her memoir-travelogue, A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton [Penguin] and Melville House Press, 2023), was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award, the Jhalak Prize, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards.