Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Carolyn Jess-Cooke was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her PhD resulted in her first book, Shakespeare and Film, and kicked off an early career in academia. She is currently Senior Lecturer and Programme Convenor for the MLitt Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Carolyn’s first poetry collection, Inroads (Seren) received a Northern Writers Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Tyrone Guthrie prize, an Arts Council Award, and was shortlisted for the New London Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in 2010. Her second collection BOOM! explores her experiences of motherhood and received a K Blundell award from the Society of Authors and a Northern Writers Award. She edited the bestselling anthology Writing Motherhood.
Carolyn has a prestigious parallel career as a novelist. Her first novel The Guardian Angel’s Journal was published in 23 languages and was an international bestseller, her subsequent titles: The Boy Who Could See Demons, I Know My Name, The Blame Game all did very well. The last two sold as film/TV options. Her novel, The Nesting, set in Norway, was published Harper Collins/Random House in 2020. Her next novel The Light House Witches is forthcoming in October.
