Zoë Brigley Thompson

I started this blog as a PhD student, but I still use it:
*to map my research – topics such as women’s writing,
*to comment on political issues relevant to my research,
*and to keep logs of journeys/research trips.

General Bio

Eric Gregory Award winner (2003)
Academi Bursary winner (2005)
English Association Fellows’ Poetry Prize Winner (2006)
Long-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize (2008)
Short-listed for the Arvon International Poetry Competition (2010)

Zoë Brigley Thompson was listed recently by The Manhattan Review and the Best American Poetry Blog as one of the best young British poets writing at the moment.

She is a Celtic writer (originally from Wales) but now lives in Pennsylvania, USA. She has published a pamphlet of poetry, Heaventree New Writers: Vol 1 (2004) as well as her debut full collection, The Secret (Bloodaxe 2007).

The Secret was made a UK Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was long-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize, an international award for writers under 30. Poems from The Secret won a substantial Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in London.

Zoë has won a translation fellowship from University of East Anglia and a writing bursary from Academi, the Welsh Literature Promotion Agency. She was recently shortlisted in the Arvon International Poetry Competition. She has co-edited an anthology of women’s poetry titled Bluebeard’s Wives (2007) with the poet Julie Boden.

Research

Under her married name “Zoe Brigley Thompson”, Zoë conducts research in the area of violence against women and human rights. She edited with Sorcha Gunne the Routledge volume Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives (2010).

Apart from her main research topics (contemporary poetry and violence against women), she has also written or spoken about:
*the novel (Jean Rhys and Virginia Woolf),
*film (the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre),
*visual art (Hannah Wilke, Frida Kahlo),
*the graphic novel or comicbook (Alan Moore),
*and the popular song (developing an essay on Amy Winehouse).

As a postgraduate, she attended research seminars with Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler and she has a strong commitment to employing feminist theory in her analysis, especially that of Irigaray, Butler, Julia Kristeva and Jessica Benjamin.

She taught English Literature and Creative Writing as a Warwick Postgraduate Fellow (2004-2007) and for a few years as a full-time lecturer (the equivalent of the American assistant professor position) (2007-2010) at Northampton University. For more about her teaching, please see her academic profile