Family Lines

Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, his collections of poetry include Seeing Stars (2010), Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (2019), Magnetic Field (2020) and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2007). He writes extensively for television and radio, and is the author of two novels and the non-fiction bestsellers All Points North (1998), Walking Home (2012) and Walking Away (2015). His theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2014. From 2015 to 2019, he served as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, and, in 2018, he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Simon Armitage is Poet Laureate.

Rachel Bower is an award-winning writer based in Sheffield. She is the author of Moon Milk (Valley Press) and Epistolarity and World Literature (Palgrave Macmillan), winner of the London Magazine Short Story Prize 201920 and the W&A Short Story Competition 2020. She teaches at the University of Leeds.