Lucy English was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in London. She studied English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia, and has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University.
She has three novels published by Fourth Estate: Selfish People (1998), set in contemporary Bristol; Children of Light (1999); and Our Dancing Days (2000), set in a Suffolk commune in the 1970s.
She is best known as a performance poet, first winning the Bristol Poetry Slam in 1996, and going on to tour worldwide, performing her poetry at several international festivals including the Edinburgh Fringe, Austin International Poetry Festival, Wordfest, at Calgary in Canada and The Cuirt in Galway, Ireland. Her poetry has also been published in a variety of anthologies.
In 2003 she co-ordinated the International Conference in the writing and practice of performance poetry at Bath Spa University and since then run the only performance poetry module at a UK university. In 2006 she was artistic director of Apples and Snakes Poetry Tour, Exposed. In 2007, she was a finalist in the first BBC Radio 4 Poetry Slam.
She has toured Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Taiwan with the British Council running workshops and performances. She has also run workshops for the Arvon Foundation and The New Writing Partnership.
In 2010-11 she toured the UK with the acclaimed Arts Council sponsored multi-media poetry show Flash.
In 2012 she organised'MIX', the conference in Transmedia Writing and Digital Creativity.
Lucy English is a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She was the Royal Literature Fellow at the University of Swansea from 2003-6 and 2011-12 and the Royal Literature Fellow at the University of Cardiff Institute during 2007-08.
She is available for talks, lectures, performance and workshops. With fellow writer Rachel Bentham she runs Wordsmiths, a manuscript reading service.
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