Established in 2018, the87press is an Asian, LGBTQIA+, and neurodiverse led publishing collective and events curator in South London. We prioritize modernism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and environmentalism in our print publications of poetry, fiction, and essays. Additionally, we offer educational and creative workshops, industry leading live events, and regular commissioned work with online journal of culture theHythe. Committed to equity, all authors receive fair contracts regardless of their background. As part of Arts Council England's National Portfolio, we contribute to the Let's Create project and look forward to fostering inclusive learning spaces as the only NPO in the London Borough of Sutton.
Core Team
Azad Ashim Sharma
Director and Editor
Azad Ashim Sharma is the director of the87press and author of Against the Frame (Broken Sleep Books 2022), Ergastulum (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and Boiled Owls (Nightboat Books, 2024). Azad is currently a CHASE funded PhD candidate in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London where he sometimes teaches creative-critical writing. In 2023, Azad was awarded the Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Book Award by the Caribbean Philosophical Association.
Kashif Sharma-Patel
Company Secretary and Editor-in-Chief
Kashif Sharma-Patel is a London-based writer, poet, and editor at the87press. Kashif has written across music, literature, and art for The Poetry Project Newsletter, Verso Blog and Los Angeles Review of Books. Pamphlets include relief I willed it (Gong Farm, 2021), fragments on mutability (Earthbound Press, 2020), and Suburban Finesse, co-authored with Ashwani Sharma and Azad Ashim Sharma (Sad Press, 2021). Their debut collection is due in 2024 from Broken Sleep Books. They run a newsletter called culture hawker at kashifsp.substack.com.
Aisheshek Magauina
Creative Manager
Aisheshek Magauina is a South london based comedian, writer, and core team at the87press. At the87press she is a Creative Manager, with a focus on videography, video editing, and social media.
Sopo Ramischwili
Creative Manager
Sopo is a South London based photographer from a mixed West Asian background.
Sopo’s work focuses on music, fashion, and culture.
Check out their work at soporamischwili.com
Her work at the87press covers any creative output, from social media and marketing to photography and web design. Sopo also works on distribution, admin, and event management.
Board of Advisors
Shura Davey Joseph-Gruner
Chair of the Board and Education and Accessibility Advisor
Shura Davey Joseph-Gruner is an artist, educator, and researcher from London. Shura's arts practice includes photography, digital media, and curation. Most recently, he contributed a digital artwork to 'Echoes of Solidarity' by the Afro Middle East Centre in South Africa in 2022. He also co-devised 'Neurodiversions', a series of immersive exhibitions established in 2019 that explore the production of culture and knowledge by neurodivergent people.
As an educator, Shura's specialisms are in accessible and critical pedagogies and he teaches across the London College of Communication's Design School and in the University of the Arts London's flagship Inclusive Practice Unit. Previously, he has also worked in 1:1 support for disabled students at Chelsea and Camberwell Colleges of Art, Central Saint Martins, and BRIT School.
Sarah Shin
Publishing Strategy Advisor
Sarah Shin is a writer, publisher and curator whose work includes making books, texts, gardens, games, scents, spaces, portals and practices. She is a founder of Ignota, a creative publishing and curatorial house exploring consciousness, technology and healing; Silver Press, the feminist publisher; New Suns, a curatorial project that began as a literary festival at the Barbican Centre; and Standard Deviation, a spatial practice exploring the coincidence of psychic, geometric and inhabited space through methods including storytelling, dreaming, memory, architecture and digital processes.
Daniella Valz Gen
Curatorial and Pedagogical Advisor
Daniella Valz Gen, a poet, artist, and oracle, explores intersections among languages, cultures, and value systems with a focus on embodiment and ritual. With over fifteen years of international experience, their work has been featured in exhibitions, performances, and residencies worldwide. They authored "Subversive Economies" (PSS 2018) and contributed to various art journals. As the 2018 writer in residency for Serpentine’s ‘Writing the City, Language & Power’, and through projects like "(Be)longing" in 2019, they investigate migration and ecology through site-specific interventions. In October 2022, Valz Gen participated in the OrganizmoBloom residency in La Urbana, Colombia, witnessing a reclamation of traditions. Engaged with not/nowhere and the87press's advisory board, they promote inclusive publishing practices and alternative pedagogies.
Danah Abdulla
Design and Financial Advisor
Danah Abdulla is a Palestinian-Canadian designer, educator and researcher interested in new narratives and practices in design that push the disciplinary boundaries and definitions of the discipline. She is Programme Director of Graphic Design at Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts (University of the Arts London). She has previously held positions at Brunel University London and London College of Communication (University of the Arts London). Danah obtained her Ph.D. in Design from Goldsmiths, University of London and is a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform. In 2010, she founded Kalimat Magazine, an independent, nonprofit publication about Arab thought and culture. Her research focuses on decolonising design, possibilities of design education, design culture(s), the politics of design, publishing, and social design. www.dabdulla.com
Joe Luna
Editorial Advisor
Joe Luna’s books of poetry include Astroturf and Other Poems (2013), Ten Zones (2014), Air Hunger (2018), and Development Hell (2020). He lives and works in Brighton.
Gurdeep Mattu
Trade and Distribution Advisor
Gurdeep Mattu is a publisher and the author of Sons and Fascination (Paperbooks, 2011) as well as several pamphlets. He works as an Editorial Project Manager at the British Standards Institution (BSI) and has held senior roles at Bloomsbury, Continuum, RLI and Sunrise Publishing. His poetic influences include T. S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, H.D. and William Carlos Williams. Gurdeep is working on his second novel, "Sister Feelings Call", and can be found blogging at gurdeepmattu.wordpress.com
Rhoni Blankenhorn
Creative Partnerships Advisor
Rhoni Blankenhorn is a Filipina American writer. Her manuscript, Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet, won the Trio Award. A Sewanee Scholar, Saltonstall Fellow, and Tin House alum, her words can be found or are forthcoming in Narrative, AAWW, Couplet, Honey Literary, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in poetry and translation at Columbia University, and works as an editor, educator, and creative strategist.
Portrait by Antonio Escalante