The Royal Society of Literature has announced that the winner of this year’s Benson Medal is Manchester’s SuAndi OBE. The announcement came alongside the appointment of 42 new Fellows.

Founded in 1916 by scholar, author and RSL Fellow A.C. Benson, the Benson Medal honours service to literature across a whole career. SuAndi is a writer, poet and arts practitioner born and raised in Manchester by a Liverpool Irish mother and a Nigerian Ijaw father. Since joining the arts she has taken up every opportunity to expand her skills; this has been particular to her role as the Freelance Cultural Director of National Black Arts Alliance as she firmly believes in collaborative work that promotes the diversity of Black cultures and artists.

SuAndi’s performance work has taken her the length and breadth of the UK and out into Europe, North America, Brazil and Africa. Her acclaimed one-woman show The Story of M is now on the A Level curriculum. She has produced films on the Pan African 1945 congress, The Victorian Writer Ruskin and two historical  accounts of African migrants to England from 195 and Mothers of Mixed Race children. She is the recipient of the OBE, a  Doctor of Arts from Manchester Metropolitan University and  a Doctor of Letters degree from Lancaster University.

Her awards include the Windrush Inspirational Award, Winston Churchill Fellowship, Hope & Inspiration Award for Work Supporting Black History Month, NESTA Dream Time Fellowship, Big Issue in the North Individual Inspirational Award and the MBMEN Lifetime Award. In 2023 SuAndi was the recipient of the Manchester Culture Special Recognition Award.

Profiles of her life in the arts and can be found on the Museum of Colour and Writer’s Mosaic websites and the recently launched digital resource SussedBlackWoman.