Biography (longer version):
Clare Best’s first full collection, Excisions, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize 2012. She has performed her autobiographical poem cycle ‘Self-portrait without Breasts’ across the UK and Ireland, and in the USA and Canada. Other poetry publications include Treasure Ground, Breastless and CELL. Springlines – a collaboration with the painter Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis, and part of their project exploring hidden and mysterious bodies of water – was published in 2017 by Little Toller Books. Clare’s prose memoir The Missing List was a finalist in the Mslexia Memoir Competition 2014/15 and was published in September 2018. A new poetry collection, Each Other, came out with Waterloo Press in autumn 2019. Clare has been a bookbinder, a bookseller and an editor and she currently teaches Creative Writing for the Open University. She has held writing residencies in a range of settings including HMP Shepton Mallet, Woodlands Organic Farm on the Lincolnshire Fens and the University of Brighton. In 2020 Clare was awarded a MA (Distinction) in Opera Making at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and held a Fellowship there in 2020-2021; during this time she worked on three chamber operas and several other vocal projects.
Website: www.clarebest.co.uk
Twitter: @clarebest1
Short Biography:
Clare Best’s most recent books are her prose memoir The Missing List (Linen Press, 2018) and a new poetry collection Each Other (Waterloo Press 2019). Other publications include Excisions; Breastless; CELL; Springlines. Recent work published in Envoi, 14 Magazine and The Friday Poem.
Website: www.clarebest.co.uk
Twitter: @clarebest1
A full CV is available on request – please contact Clare.
Official photos
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When using these photos please credit Derek Adams.
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