Jessica Traynor (Ireland) read for the John Hewitt International Summer School in 2017, alongside Pat Boran and Enda Coyle-Greene.

Jessica’s 2014 debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award. Her second collection, The Quick (Deadlus) was an Irish Times poetry choice of 2019. Writing in Poetry Ireland Review, Siobhan Campbell said of the book: “this poet [is] capable of creating canonical work which draws on a contemporary re-thinking of poetic traditions while finding a voice that is wholly her own.”

In 2019, Jessica edited Correspondences: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision with actor Stephen Rea, raising funds for MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland). She was commissioned by BBC to write in response to Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, and by Music for Galway to write an opera with composer Elaine Agnew for Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture. A song cycle, ‘An Island Sings’, commissioned by Poetry Ireland and Chamber Choir Ireland, was performed in the National Concert Hall in 2019.

Awards include the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary, Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year and the Listowel Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing for the Irish Writers Centre, Big Smoke Writing Factory and at various festivals around Ireland.