Joelle Taylor

Joelle Taylor is a queer, working class author of six plays and four collections of poetry, most recently C+nto & Othered Poems, winner of the 2022 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and the 2022 Polari Prize. A former UK poetry slam champion, Joelle founded the national youth slam championships, SLAMbassadors. Joelle has lead workshops and residences in schools, prisons, youth centres, refugee groups and many other settings for organisations including the Poetry Society, the British Council, the Arvon Foundation and English PEN. She has received a Changemaker Award from the Southbank Centre, a fellowship of the RSA, is co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live (a live poetry and music night currently resident at the Southbank Centre) and is the commissioning editor at Out-Spoken Press. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.