Benjamin Zephaniah
Benjamin Zephaniah died today at the age of just 65 and it’s a real shame. I remember finding his books in the high school library as a teenager and just devouring them. His stark writing style just really stood out to me.
He also spoke at my university at least once and there’s photos out there of him with folks I know from there hanging out in Leicester, which is really nice to see.
My favourite of his books was Refugee Boy, about a really wonderful kid from Ethiopia who ends up a refugee in England and is taken in by a foster family. It’s a great novel and I should read it again.