Karen McCarthy Woolf was born in London to an English mother and a Jamaican father. She is the recipient of the Kate Betts Memorial Prize and an Arts and Humanities Research Council scholarship from Royal Holloway, where she is a PhD candidate. Described in The Poetry Review as ‘extraordinarily moving and technically flawless’, her celebrated début An Aviary of Small Birds was shortlisted for the 2015 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, as well as being a Guardian Book of the Year and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her latest collection Seasonal Disturbances (2017) is a PBS Recommendation and was described by Young Poet Laureate for London, Warsan Shire, as ‘a strange and stunning collection from a true writer.’ Karen is the editor of three literary anthologies, most recently Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014), and her poetry has been published in Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation among others. She has presented her poetry in many forms, from collaborative choreography and radio soundscape to audiovisual installation, in venues around the world, from Mexico City and Singapore to the US and the Caribbean.

 

Photo Credit - Naomi Woddis