Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. Her academic monograph Stevie Smith and the Aphorism: Hard Language (Oxford University Press, 2022) won the MSA First Book Award in 2023; her memoir-travelogue A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton and Melville House Press, 2023) has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2024, and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2024.