Martina Evans

Martina Evans is a poet and novelist and the author of nine books of prose and poetry. Her first novel Midnight Feast won a Betty Trask award in 1995, and her third novel No Drinking No Dancing No Doctors (2000) won an Arts Council England award in 1999. Her fourth poetry collection Facing the Public (2009) won the International Premio Piero Ciampi prize for poetry. Her most recent collection of poems, Burnfort Las Vegas, is published by Anvil Press (2014).

She is a popular reader of her own work and has performed at many venues in England and Ireland as well as in California, Switzerland, Italy and Shanghai. She has frequently performed her work on UK and Irish radio. Martina has judged various competitions including the London Arts Board awards and the Listowel short-story competition. Her journalism and reviews have been published by the Irish Times, the Irish Post and the Guardian, and she was children’s books editor at the Irish Post from 1998 until 2009.

She has a wide experience of teaching and has run seminars and taught workshops at various institutions, including London Metropolitan University, Kingston University, University of East London and Goldsmiths. She has directed workshops for the Arvon Foundation and Spread the Word as well as at various literary festivals in the UK, Ireland, Switzerland and the USA. At present, she is an associate lecturer at Birkbeck University and teaches creative writing at the City Literary Institute.