Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Biography
Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Carolyn Jess-Cooke was born in 1978 in Belfast, Northern Ireland --- right around the corner from C. S. Lewis’ birthplace. She started writing as a child, producing first a book of illustrated short stories at the age of seven, then a series of novels and poetry collections. After years of pestering publishers she finally saw her work in print at the age of seventeen; since then her work has appeared in such prestigious publications as Poetry London, Ambit, Magma, Poetry Wales, The SHOp, Poetry Ireland, and The Wolf, and on a variety of non-print media, including a poem that has been set into a 700m ribbon of steel at the Roseberry Park Medical Facility in Middlesbrough --- currently the largest piece of public textual art in the UK. Carolyn has performed her work at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, the Ledbury Poetry Festival and at the Irish Writer’s Centre, and has received numerous awards, including an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, the Tyrone Guthrie Prize for Poetry, and a Northern Promise Award.
Following a first class honours degree in English Literature and Classical Studies at the Queen’s University of Belfast, Carolyn received a scholarship to study for a Masters degree in Creative Writing, during which she developed the first drafts of what would later become her debut poetry collection, INROADS. Working as a piano tutor, pianist, photographer, and the occasional acting stint, Carolyn travelled the world during this time and lived for several years in Sydney, Australia. Later completing a PhD in Shakespeare on film, Carolyn took up an academic post in film studies at the University of Sunderland in 2005 followed by a senior post in Creative Writing at the University of Northumbria in 2009. She gave up tenure in 2011 to write full time.
Carolyn Jess-Cooke
