Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy is one of Britain’s best-known and most celebrated poets. Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for her collection of linked love poems, Rapture, her other collections include Standing Female Nude, winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time, which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and The Bees, which was awarded Britain’s prestigious Costa Award for Poetry. Also a playwright, Duffy’s plays include Take My Husband, Cavern of Dreams, Little Women, Big Boys, Loss, and Casanova, all of which have been performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre in London.

The Scottish-born lesbian daughter of two Glasgow working-class radicals, Duffy was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom 2009-2019, the first woman to be appointed to the position in 400 years. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is Professor and Creative Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. She lives in Manchester.