Maggie Butt

Maggie Butt is an ex-journalist and BBC television producer, turned poet and novelist. Her publications include five poetry collections, and her novel The Prisoner’s Wife will be published in the UK and USA in August 2020 by imprints of Penguin Random House. A strong interest in history and war runs through her writing, with themes of human rights and the resilience of women. The Prisoner’s Wife is a second world war novel based on a true story.

Her poetry collection Degrees of Twilight (The London Magazine, 2015) followed the illustrated books Sancti Clandestini – Undercover Saints, a hagiography of imaginary patron saints, and Ally Pally Prison Camp, which tells the story of the 3,000 civilian men who were imprisoned at Alexandra Palace during the first world war. Earlier collections were petite, a book of pocket-sized poems, and her first collection Lipstick.

Maggie has a PhD from Cardiff University and is an Associate Professor at Middlesex University where she has taught creative writing since 1990. She was Chair of the National Association of Writers in Education from 2007 to 2012. She edited a collection of essays, Story – the Heart of the Matter. She lives in Whitstable and London with her husband of 30 years. They have two grown-up daughters.