Wednesday 24th June

Exiled Lit Cafe at 7.00 pm
49 Great Ormond Street, London WC1N 3HZ

Courage for the Battle

Exiles’ battle for democracy in the home country

painting: Ze Tubia

Poetry & Prose – Discussion – Open Mic
with
Elika Ansari
Xaviera Ringeling
Alemu Tebeje

Hosted by Rouhi Shafii

Elika Ansari
Elika Ansari has spent the past 11+ years working and volunteering with refugees and asylum seekers in Belgium, Greece and the U.K. She is a writer and storyteller, certified yoga instructor, humanitarian worker and social scientist. She holds Masters degrees in social sciences, humanities and social anthropology from the universities of St Andrews, KU Leuven and others. For several years, Elika moved through different refugee camps in Greece, working with organisations such as Doctors Without Borders and others, and she also founded her own project which ran psychosocial activities for refugee children. Based on these experiences, Elika published her second book, ‘The Five Stages of Moria: ‘The Worst Refugee Camp on Earth’, in September 2022 – which is fiction based on true stories. Before this, she had also published a Middlegrade book, ‘Seacity Rising: A Tale of Unwatery Adventures’ in June 2019. She has edited a book of short stories entitled ‘Where the Moon Still Watches: 30 Stories of Migration and Refuge (New Citizens’ Gateway).

Xaviera Ringeling
Chilean poet residing in London since 2012, she crafts poetry in Spanish and in English. Her work explores themes of identity, womanhood, nature, belonging, and liberation from oppressive regimes and hegemonic perspectives. She holds a degree in Philosophy from Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile and completed a Master of Science in Environmental Studies at University College London. Her collection “La oblicua luz de la tarde” received the XXXII Premio Voces Nuevas from the Spanish publisher Torremozas and has appeared in their anthology and in “Leyendo Poesía in London”. Her debut poetry collection, “Alba”, was published in London by El Ojo de la Cultura in 2019. Her poetry is available in translation in the bilingual anthology “Equidistant Voices”, featuring Latin American poets in the UK. Her second Spanish-language collection, “Vientre”, was released in 2024 by Equidistancias. Work in English can be found in online magazines including Writers Mosaic, Exiled Writers Inc, and Perro Negro.

Alemu Tebeje
Alemu Tebeje is an Ethiopian journalist, poet, lyric writer and campaigner and now lives in London. His poems have been published in Amharic, Chinese and English. His first collection was Greetings to the People of Europe (Tamrat, 2018). He co-translated and co-edited with Chris Beckett Songs We Learn from Trees: An Anthology of Ethiopian Amharic Poetry (Carcanet, 2020).

at
49 Great Ormond Street
London WC1N 3HZ
Nearest tube stations: Holborn and Russell Square

£4 Exiled Writers Ink 2026 members. £6 others.
Free for asylum seekers.
Cash only on the door.
or
In advance by Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/exiled-writers-ink-courage-for-the-battle-poetry-discussion-open-mic-tickets-1990908601220?aff=oddtdtcreator&_gl