Karen McCarthy Woolf | |
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Born | 1966 (age 57–58) London, England |
Occupation | Poet |
Website | www |
Karen McCarthy Woolf (born 1966)[1][2] is a poet of English and Jamaican parentage.[3]
Karen McCarthy Woolf was born in London to English and Jamaican parents.[1] Her father emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1957 as a part of the Windrush generation, and her experience and identity as a mixed-race woman has informed her poetry.[2]
She has a PhD (2018) from Royal Holloway, University of London: her thesis title was At the centre of the edge : contemporary ecological poetry and the sacred hybrid, and it focussed on the work of Louise Glück, Kei Miller and Joy Harjo[4][5]
McCarthy Woolf was mentored on The Complete Works poets of colour mentoring scheme initiated by Bernardine Evaristo to redress representational invisibility.[6]
McCarthy Woolf's 2014 book An Aviary of Small Birds was shortlisted for the 2015 Best First Collection award of the Forward Prizes for Poetry[7] and the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize,[8] and chosen as an Observer poetry book of the month.[9]
The poem "Outside" from her Seasonal Disturbances was chosen by Carol Rumens as "Poem of the Week" in The Guardian in December 2017.[10]
In 2019, McCarthy Woolf was appointed Poet in Residence at University of California, Los Angeles.[11] She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.[1][12]
McCarthy Woolf won second place in the 2020 Laurel Prize for her collection Seasonal Disturbances.[13]
In 2021 she was one of the judges of the 2020 National Poetry Competition.[14][15]