Women in Journalism: Shyama Perera, Monica Porter, Jennifer Nadel, Kuba Shand-Baptiste

What’s it like to be a woman working in journalism in 2021?

What’s it like to be a woman working in journalism in 2021? Three local journalists offer their perspectives on life and work in the ever-changing world of modern media. With Monica Porter, Kuba Shand-Baptiste and Jennifer Nadel in conversation with local writer and presenter Shyama Perera.

Shyama Perera

Shyama Perera is the author of three well-received novels from way-back-when, and a history of contraception. As a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund she has worked in universities, created podcasts on writing, and managed groups of writers working with young people. The community group she started for the RLF four years ago, promoting literary criticism, is now flourishing independently. The group meets weekly in NW6 to deconstruct poetry and short stories.  You can join!  She edits manuscripts, teaches blogging and creative writing, contributes to anthologies, and underwrites all this by training life-science start-ups to create stories for their decks and their pitches. 

Jennifer Nadel

Jennifer Nadel is a qualified barrister, author, poet, speaker and an award-winning journalist. She has reported for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITN from around the world and has run for the UK Parliament twice. She is the co-founder of Compassion in Politics and her most recent book is WE: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, co-written with Gillian Anderson.

Monica Porter

Monica Porter is a freelance journalist who was born in Budapest, Hungary, and grew up in New York before moving to London. She began her career in the Seventies as a staff writer on the weekly Local Government Chronicle, and turned freelance after the birth of her first son in 1978. She has written for British newspapers including the Daily Mail (for which she has been penning the weekly column, Missing and Found, since 1999), The Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and London Evening Standard. She has also contributed to Reader’s Digest, Saga Magazine, Business Life, Woman’s Own, Good Housekeeping and Psychologies. She is the author of six books: The Paper Bridge: A Return to Budapest; Deadly Carousel: A Diva’s Exploits in Wartime Budapest; Dreams and Doorways: Turning Points in the Early Lives of Famous People; Long Lost: The Story of the Newspaper Column That Started the Reunion Industry; Raven: My Year of Dating Dangerously; and Children Against Hitler: The Young Resistance Heroes of the Second World War.  Monica has two sons and four grandchildren, and lives in North West London. www.monicaporter.co.uk

Kuba Shand-Baptiste

Kuba Shand-Baptiste is an award-winning journalist and assistant opinion editor for the i. She has worked at and written for publications including The Independent, GQ, and The Conversation. Alongside her current role at the i paper, she has written essays for Loud Black Girls: 20 Black Women Writers Ask: What’s Next? and gal-dem’s “I Will Not Be Erased”: Our Stories About Growing up as People of Colour.