Biography

Jessica Traynor is a poet, essayist, dramaturg and creative writing teacher from Dublin.

Jessica Traynor was born in Dublin in 1984 and is a poet, essayist and librettist. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award and in 2016 was named one of the best poetry debuts of the past five years on Bustle.com. Her second collection, The Quick, was a 2019 Irish Times poetry book of the year. A Place of Pointed Stones, a pamphlet commissioned by Offaly County Council, was published by The Salvage Press in 2021. Her third collection, Pit Lullabies, was published by Bloodaxe in March 2022. It is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was a summer reading recommendation in the Guardian, and an Irish Times Book of the Year. It was shortlisted for the Yeats Society Sligo/ Irish Independent Poetry Prize. Jessica was awarded the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award in 2023.

Essays and interviews have been published in The Dublin Review, Tolka, Banshee, Winter Papers, Sunday Miscellany 50, and We Are Dublin and listed for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Award and Fitzcarraldo Editions Prize.

She has written libretti for a number of operas, including Paper Boat (Music for Galways/ INO, 2022), Ghost Apples for 20 Shots of Opera (INO, 2020), and The Wanderer (Irish Modern Dance Theatre, 2022).

She has received commissions for poems from BBC Radio 4, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Model Gallery Sligo, The Salvage Press, VISUAL Carlow, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council and The Poetry Programme (RTÉ), and awards including the Hennessy New Writer of the Year, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary, and the Listowel Poetry Prize. In 2016, she was named one of the ‘Rising Generation’ of poets by Poetry Ireland.

She has reviewed poetry for RTÉ’s Arena, and for Poetry Ireland Review, and is a critic for The Irish Times. She has held residencies including the Yeats Society, Sligo, Carlow College, and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. She is an inaugural Creative Fellow of UCD, where she completed her MA in Creative Writing in 2008, and was the 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence at University of Galway.

She has worked as Literary Manager of the Abbey Theatre and Deputy Museum Director of EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum.

In 2019, she co-edited Correspondences: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision with actor Stephen Rea, bringing together asylum seekers in Ireland’s direct provision system with Irish writers. The book was a best-seller, with all proceeds going to MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland).

She is poetry editor for Banshee Press.