The Writers of Wales Database

BRIGLEY, ZOË

Email: zoe.brigley@gmail.com
E–portfolio: www.go.warwick.ac.uk/ep-ensdav
Blog: www.blogs.warwick.ac.uk/zoebrigley

Zoë Brigley was born in 1981 and grew up in Caerphilly in the Rhymney Valley. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003 and an Academi bursary in 2005. She studied English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick, later obtaining an MA on Gender and Literature. Zoë was then a postgraduate fellow at Warwick before gaining a lectureship. She has travelled and worked in Central America, particularly Mexico.

She has worked in a number of educational institutions. She has run Creative Writing workshops in schools, colleges, universities and at the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY). She teaches on the creative writing modules, The Practice of Poetry and Modes of Writing at Warwick University. She also has experience of teaching English Literature and she now teaches on courses such as Academic Writing as well as Poetry and Society at Warwick University.

Her poetry has been published in journals such as The New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Leviathan Quarterly, Stride, Skald, Scintilla, Agenda Broadsheet etc, and anthologies such as Seren Selections, Reactions, Phoenix New Writing, The Gift and Poetry Wales 40 Years.

Her first full-length poetry collection, The Secret, was published by Bloodaxe in autumn 2007. It was long-listed for the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize.

She has also read her poetry at a variety of venues including arts centres such as the Poetry Café in London, the Orange Studio in Birmingham, Warwick Art Centre, The Blue Room in Newcastle and Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff and at festivals such as Ledbury Poetry Festival, Coventry’s Godiva Festival, the Hay Guardian Festival and the Green Man Folk Festival.

Zoë has chaired discussions with poets at Warwick Art Centre such as Wendy Cope, Carol Ann Duffy, Jo Shapcott and Simon Rae. She is a Member of Academi.

Selected Publications:
The Secret (Bloodaxe, 2007)

Contributed to:
Heaventree Press New Poets 1 (co-writer) (Heaventree Press, 2004)
Poetry Wales 40 Years (contributor) (Seren, 2005)
Seren Selections (contributor) (Seren, 2006)
Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures) (co-editor) (Routledge, 2009)