Alex Wheatle MBE | 3rd January 1963-16th March 2025

Alex was one of the first people to welcome me into the writing community. I’ll never forget the first time I met him. We were on a panel together at Waterstones in his stomping ground of Clapham. I knew then that I had made a friend for life.

Over the years our paths criss-crossed in prisons, television, radio and book events. I remember when I visited a young offenders institute, the librarian told me that they were desperate for Alex to come visit but they had no details for him. I took so much pride in telling them that I knew him and could fix it – which happened. In 2011 I was the Harrogate Theakston’s Crime Festival’s programme chair and Alex was at the top of my list to participate.

As a working class black woman, who grew up on an East End estate, I looked up to him as a working class black man from London, who was one of the great oracles and truth-sayers of the black community.

Loving, gentle, and so kind.

I will miss him so much.

I first met Alex when I worked for Centerprise and his very first book, Brixton Rock, was published by a small independent publisher [BlackAmber]. Alex was determined, talented and a very generous writer, encouraging others with his time and experience. He’s been a massive voice for Black British writing but his passing is a huge loss to readers and writers alike. His work broke down barriers in publishing, and it’s a small blessing that his books will go on and continue to inspire thousands of young readers.

Thank you Alex.

During the pandemic I was on the same panel as Alex at the launch of the Rethinking Diversity in Publishing report, organised by Words of Colour.

I knew a little of Alex as he’s featured on The Bookseller‘s YA Book Prize shortlist, and I’d read Crongton Knights as part of that. During the conversation, Alex directed a question to me. Would The Bookseller pledge to feature a black debut writer on the front cover of the magazine, “maybe every few months”?

It was a small ask but, given the lack of representation on publishing lists, an important one. That was four years ago, but I still think about this from time to time. There is something about the matter-of-factness of the request that has stayed with me.

Alex was asking The Bookseller to step up, and I wonder if we have.

I always felt a genuine joy whenever I had the chance to share a panel with Alex, interview him, or chat in a green room at a literary festival. His humility shone through in every interaction, as he spoke with a compassion that empowered and inspired those around him.

He touched so many lives by sharing his life story and the stories of the characters he created. The Small Axe episode detailing his early life resonated deeply with viewers, including myself. His books and their adaptations will continue to inspire generations to come.

Alex’s legacy is profound. We will miss his physical presence, but his spirit lives on in his writing.

It was 2011, a few years after my MA, that I started the journey towards becoming a published author. To my surprise when I added Alex on LinkedIn, he got back to me as per below. An established author as he was at that time It really made my day. That was the kind of guy he was. He always had time for everybody.

LinkedIn

Alex Wheatle has sent you a message.

Date: 3/03/2011

Subject: Hi

I did the same thing when I first started out. The best of wishes to your writing career and let me know how you get on or if I can be of some help.

Alex Wheatle was more than an author; he was a storyteller, a mentor, an advocate, and a friend. His death leaves a void that will be felt by so many, but his words and his impact will continue to inspire generations to come.

I had the privilege of working with Alex throughout my career. From interviewing him for my first book to collaborating on The Green Room play and the Take Flight Hub for black and brown authors, to chairing many of his book events: every encounter reinforced what a singular presence he was. His honesty and vulnerability always struck me. That same authenticity infused his writing and was evident in interactions he had with young people.

One of my most quintessential ‘Alex’ moments was at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where I chaired an event with him shortly after his diagnosis. Despite everything he was facing, he remained as generous, funny, professional, and brilliant with young audiences as ever.

Alex embodied a youthful, joyful, and enthusiastic spirit. His life was marked by hardship, by trauma that he never shied away from discussing. Instead, he drew from those experiences to be a role model for so many: turning pain into power, adversity into advocacy. He was a champion for other black and racially minoritised writers; always on hand to be supportive and share his experiences with others.

His legacy is undeniable. He has been a transformative force in British children’s and YA literature, breaking barriers and paving the way for future writers. His voice will be missed, but his stories will continue to live on.

Rest in power, Alex.

It’s 2012. One year after my first novel was published. I received an email from Alex introducing himself, explaining he’d got my email address from a mutual friend, and invited me to join him at a Black History Month event he had received some funding for to pull together.

The event’s focus was new and emerging writers. Irenosen Okojie was another of the writers invited, along with Ernest Alanki. It was to take place in South London, where Alex lived and was locally known as the Brixton Bard, a name he coined during his DJ years with Crucial Rocker – the sound system he’d co-founded. He was already the author of seven published novels at that time.

On the night, Alex introduced us individually to the audience and created space for us each to do a reading from our work, followed by an audience Q&A. He did not do a reading himself. At the end of the event, he gave each of us an envelope containing one third of the funding he had received, in cash.  He did not take any of the money for himself.

The great writer and literary activist, Maya Angelou, famously said: ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,’ and that saying was never truer than with the Brixton Bard. He could have legitimately plugged his own work at that event or divvied up the proceeds into quarters and taken his portion for putting the whole thing together. Instead, he passed all of it onto us three. To this day he holds the record for the person who has paid me for an event the quickest, which any emerging writer will tell you is much appreciated and exactly what is needed.

His purpose in putting that event together was to raise our literary profiles, to introduce us to wider audiences, to sell copies of our books, to pay us the maximum he could for the evening. That was who he was in the spaces he occupied, always focused on the fairness, on the exposure necessary and essential to a writer hoping to sell their books. Challenging the establishment, redressing inequity, being a vocal supporter for those with less powerful platforms and being an advocate for those without a voice.

He’d had a completely different childhood to that of most people you come across in the publishing industry or organising literary events: a difficult one, in care. He wrote novels that children like himself could see themselves in, stories they could identify with. He carried out masses of school visits, taking his work directly to the young people who could find themselves validated in the words on his pages. His social media was filled with photos of inspired school audiences, children watching, rapt.  He was a prolific writer. A tireless campaigner. He was warm. He was kind. He was funny and he was steadfast in his allyship.

My last event with Alex was a few years back. By then he had been awarded an MBE for services to literature, been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for his young adult novel Crongton Knights. He had been given a pot of cash to put on an event at a literary festival for a group of black authors to speak about the lack of diversity in the publishing industry.

He let me and the authors involved know in advance that he’d had enough of talking at literary festivals about the lack of diversity in publishing. He said everyone in the publishing industry knew what the pervading issues were that kept the industry so resistant to change, and that he couldn’t see why the authors on our panel were the only writers at the literary festival not plugging their own work and trying to increase their fan base. He said we should come prepared to do a reading from our novels, and if anyone asked about the lack of diversity in the Q&A at the end, he would handle it. No one did.

Once again, he brought a group of lesser-known writers together. Once again, he stepped back into the shadows and turned the entire spotlight onto the rest of the panel. And once again, he showed us exactly who he was.

I was first introduced to Alex by Kaye Tew, Director of the Manchester Children’s Book Festival (MCBF) when Alex became the Festival’s patron. MBCF was a great match for Alex’s values: it was all about giving children from all backgrounds a chance to connect with authors and their writing.

It was Kaye’s idea for me to connect with Alex and to convince him to apply for a job in the Manchester Writing School as a lecturer in Creative Writing. I’m so grateful to her and to Alex that we all had these last few years with the man, his work, and the inspiration and mentorship that he gave to our students. There are few consolations at a time like this, but at least more people are hearing Alex’s story and sharing in the incredible legacy he leaves behind.

I was honoured to be introduced to Alex Wheatle at a Newham school (2023), where the wonderful librarian had invited Alex to speak during the school’s literary festival. Some year 9s were already familiar with his books but seemed most affected by his backstory; abandonment; abuse; prison, not deterring, but unleashing his creativity.

Although emotional, Alex was able to communicate his melancholy background in a way that the students felt invigorated and able to ask lots of questions at the end of his talk. This followed with extra orders of Alex’s books with the Crongton series, ‘following the lives of a group of teenagers in a fictional council estate’, proving very popular.

RIP Alex. Your legacy continues.

Alex Wheatle wrote about the experience of living in London as a young black man whose early life had been in care and how literature changed everything for him thanks to meeting a fellow prisoner, Simeon, who  lent him books and encouraged him to read black literature.

Inspired by great writing Alex wrote his debut novel Brixton Rock in 1999 which was based on his experience of prison and the Brixton riots. He was a new voice, ahead of his time. He continued to write best – selling books for teenagers whilst garnering many awards. (Winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award).

He joined English PEN and volunteered for their prison programme which with its’ large membership of writers took their books inside prison and gave readings and discussions to prisoners all over the UK.

I can remember our visit to Rochester Young Offenders Institute where Alex talked with such conviction and passion about books and writing and reggae music. You could have heard a pin drop. Alex made an impression on these young men with his humour and empathy and truth.

He believed in reading and writing, and the power of activism to educate those who were ignorant of the black experience and strength. He had such conviction and despite experiencing racism and ignorance in his early life, he loved London and was passionate about writing, identity, social injustice, and the importance of sharing what he learned with those who had missed out.

He published 19 books, a play, and his life story was made into a short film Small Axe directed by Steve McQueen which went on to win several awards here in UK and America.

Small axe fall big tree as the proverb goes.

Indeed.

Alex Wheatle was an incredibly talented writer and a very important voice in British literature, especially from a black male perspective. He made a really powerful contribution to our evolving canon and culture.

It is difficult for me to write of Alex Wheatle. The loss is too fresh and too overlaid with rage and grief from too many losses over the past 18 months. Memories flicker in my mind in no particular order, reminding me of the man I knew and of how little I knew him.

A decade ago, I asked Alex’s opinion about starting a prize for writers of colour. Just something that could disrupt the seamless cycle of exclusion in publishing, I told him, but his enthusiasm convinced me to go ahead.

Alex’s joy was contagious when he announced the founding of the prize, and shines through the photograph I took of him at the event. He also joined the inaugural jury as a judge. In the months that followed I learned of his compassion and generosity towards fellow writers. I learned in those first judges’ meetings that he was an innate and empathetic mentor.

Years earlier, Alex had visited my class to speak about writing, race, class, and his own story. He stood at the front of the class, deftly, and with great wit, mixing poetry and real life, fiction and politics. The students were mesmerised, gasping, sighing and laughing as he led them through time and space. If the Pied Piper were a Londoner, he’d have been Alex.

Like many of us, he had a complicated relationship with history, especially of colonisation. I remember his sheepish grin when I congratulated him on his MBE. “I accepted it because it made my mother happy.”  I thought of Island Songs, of what I knew of his childhood, and suddenly, I felt churlish for even raising it.

I saw him last at the Brixton Library for an event of his poignant memoir, Sufferah. He was, as ever, scintillating on stage, holding the packed room spellbound. But when I hugged him, he felt fragile.

Afterwards, some of us stood in Windrush Square, watching kids play as the dusk settled around us. We spoke of our favourite Alex Wheatle books and laughed at our shared adventures with him. I did not realise that we were saying goodbye.

Alex, you’re not gone.

We still have Biscuit and Coffin Head. “It was 3am and Biscuit found himself being driven through the bad lands of South London.” I know that was you in there too. And the Rasta wisehead, Sceptic, that was another incarnation of you.

I can’t forget Sceptic  — we all need that Sceptic voice, the wit, and trenchant commentary. ‘The herb eating away at their inhibitions.’ You’re here too. We need Sharon, Floyd, Carol: they had their arms around each other, and around us the readers too.

That “malevolent grey sky” – we were under it too, and that “pressure so much that we lose ourselves,” we all felt it too; and we held it together because of the way you held it together too.

So, you’re not gone, Alex. You were there from the get-go —  in East of Acre Lane and Brenton Boy and Brixton Rock. Your books were life buoys flung out to me in my youth, and you kept my head above the water, Alex, kept me from drowning, gave me succour. Alex, you not gone, you within me now, I carry you.

You not gone Alex. And I crease my face up because plenty times you made me laugh. That time when I was on the Bare Lit YA panel and you arrived late into the audience and took a chair, and I stopped dead, mid -sentence, and said the Chief is in the house now, my word not worth nothing compared to this guy, come up, Alex, take this seat. And you waved me to carry on, you doing fine, you said, keep on, I come to listen, keep on.

And afterwards, sitting with you and Courttia [Newland] and Rosemarie [Hudson] and you told me, the same – keep on, Pete, you the foundation now, we the foundation, we the bedrock like the sound-system old reggae heads, you unnerstand? And I never felt so blessed as that day when you told me that.

Alex, you not gone, you with me, you with us, and always will be, Alex.

You not gone.

Alex Wheatle was an outstanding talent and rare man. It was a joy to know him. He always made space and time for others. He never hesitated to lift fellow writers and artists up. I’ll miss him dearly.

It is with both a sense of deep loss and a heart full of gratitude that I pay tribute to the great Alex Wheatle MBE, a literary giant, a true voice of Brixton and a champion of Black British culture.

Alex was a storyteller who didn’t just write for entertainment, he wrote for change. His stories were rooted in truth, capturing the lives of young people, the struggles of identity, and the power of community. Through every page, every line, Alex spoke directly to those who felt overlooked, bringing their experiences to life with honesty and heart. He took the challenges of his own childhood and transformed them into powerful narratives that resonated far beyond his personal experience.

Through his books, plays and films he weaved stories about belonging and hope, stories that speak to all teenagers, and stories that give a lifeline to those who often feel misunderstood by society. Through his writing, performances, and advocacy, he shone a light on the richness of the Caribbean heritage that shaped him, the complexities of life in London and the universal human experience.

Before I had the privilege of meeting Alex, I was already locked-in by his debut novel, Brixton Rock, back in 1999. I first met Alex when Pilot Theatre intended to tour Crongton Knights to Theatre Peckham. The pandemic curtailed those plans however we were able to launch an entire season of response pieces created through Young and Talented.

This incredible project allowed young people to meet Alex and draw inspiration from him, encouraging them to write, film, and produce their own work, which they showcased on YouTube. This is the magic of Alex’s storytelling, his commitment to young people was real. He dedicated himself to uplifting those who were coming-up and nurturing their creativity.

We then went on to co-produce The Green Room with Joy Francis and Words of Colour, bringing a live-streamed reading of this brilliant and hilarious play by Irenosen Okojie and Yvvette Edwards to life. It was a joy to collaborate with him and a testament to resilience and creativity during such challenging times.

More recently, Alex approached me to adapt his short read Witness into a play for the ‘Alex Wheatle Witness Project for Young Actors’. It’s another shining example of how he believed in the power of art and education to transform lives.

I feel incredibly privileged to have had Alex as part of my life, as a mentor, a friend, and an inspiration. I will always remember Alex for his warmth, his infectious laughter, and his kindness. He was a king among men. His legacy, his stories, and the many lives he touched live on.

We all adored him, and my thoughts are with his family, his friends, and his countless fans, all those whose lives were forever changed by his words and spirit.

Rest in power, our beloved Brixton Bard. You will forever be missed and celebrated.