Mark Huband

Born on the Yorkshire moors of northern England, Mark Huband grew up in Harlow, Essex, UK. As a journalist and author he spent twenty-five years travelling the world. Postings as a newspaper correspondent in Abidjan and Nairobi took him to most countries of sub-Saharan Africa as they emerged from the Cold War. Initially for the Financial Times and then as Africa correspondent for the Guardian and the Observer, he covered the civil war in Liberia, the famine in Somalia, genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, and the conflicts in Angola and Sudan. Moving to Morocco, his focus was the emergence of political Islam across North Africa and the Middle East. Rebasing to Cairo as regional correspondent for the Financial Times, he became immersed in the turmoil stretching from Afghanistan to Algeria. Moving to London, in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks he was appointed to oversee the FT’s coverage of Al-Qaida – a role which took him from the slums of Manila to the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The author of eight books on Africa, the Middle East and global affairs, Mark Huband’s debut collection of poetry, American Road, was published by LiveCanon in 2014. A book-length poem – The Siege of Monrovia (LiveCanon, 2017) – has been followed by four poetry pamphlets: Skinny White Kids (2017), Exile (2018) The Candidate (2020), an account of his experience as a UK parliamentary election candidate, and The Crossing (2020), which traces the experience of walking the Pyrenees. In August 2020 he published the book-length poem Agony: A Poem of Genocide, a unique and powerful exploration in poetry of what has led human beings to commit genocide, from the annihilation of the Inca in 16th century Peru, to the Rwandan genocide in 1994, which Mark Huband witnessed as a reporter. In November 2020, Mark Huband published Skinny White Kids: A Memoir, telling the story of a childhood in the England of the 1970s.

www.markhuband.com