Nick Laird

Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone in 1975 and is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queens’ University, Belfast. 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. For many years he taught at universities in America including Columbia, Princeton and NYU. His poem, Up Late, was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2022, and a new collection will be published by Faber & Faber in June 2023.