Nick Laird

Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone in 1975. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. Feel Free, his most recent collection, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize and the Derek Walcott award. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he’s on faculty at New York University, and is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queens’ University, Belfast. He curates the annual Irish Art Centre’s Poetry fest in New York, and last year published a book for children, Weirdo, co-written with Zadie Smith. A new collection is forthcoming in June 2023.

 

Forward Prizes History:

  • 2022 Forward Prizes for Best Single Poem, shortlisted for, ‘Up Late’ (Granta)