Carolyn Jess-Cooke was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Following a BA, MA, and PhD at Queen's University, she took up a lectureship in Film Studies at the University of Sunderland.

She has published four non-fiction books in the field of Film Studies and Shakespeare, and her poetry collection, Inroads (Seren 2010) was shortlisted for the London Festival Fringe Prize for Best First Collection.  She has received a number of significant awards for writing, including a Northern Promise Award, the Tyrone Guthrie Prize for Poetry, a major Arts Council Award, an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, and a prize in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition. She is Poetry Advisor for Mslexia and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Northumbria University.

She now lives in the north east of England with her family.

View more recordings of Carolyn Jess-Cooke on the Video pages of this website.

CJC-Accent.mp4