Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw, a poet and prose writer, was born in London and has lived there for most of her life, though she resided in a town in Essex, England, during her teenage years. She has an MA in seventeenth-century art from The Courtauld Institute of Art, an independent college of the University of London. 

Greenlaw has published six collections of poetry with Faber & Faber, including The Built Moment (2019); A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde (2014), which was short-listed for the Costa Book Award for Poetry (formerly, the Whitbread Award); The Casual Perfect (2011); and Minsk (2003), which was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the Forward Prize, and the Whitbread Award. 

Greenlaw has also written numerous fiction and nonfiction works. Her first novel, Mary George of Allnorthover (HarperCollins), was published in 2001 and won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger. Her other novels are In the City of Love’s Sleep (Faber & Faber, 2018) and An Irresponsible Age (HarperCollins 2006). She has also written three works of experimental nonfiction: Some Answers Without Questions (Faber & Faber, 2021); Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland (Notting Hill Editions, 2011); and The Importance of Music to Girls (Faber & Faber, 2007). She has also published criticism about music and art, written several dramas for radio, composed a libretto for a production of Peter Pan, and has produced documentaries, including two about Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop.

Greenlaw’s other awards include a Cholmondeley Award and a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship. She was the first artist in residence at the Science Museum in London and has also held residencies at Royal Festival Hall and the Royal Society of Medicine. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) in 2004 and has served as a member of the RSL Council. She is a former chair of the Poetry Society and was the chair of judges for the inaugural Folio Prize. 

Greenlaw has taught at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was a professor of poetry at the University of East Anglia from 2007 to 2013, and a visiting professor at both King’s College London from 2015 to 2016 and at Freie Universität Berlin in 2017. In September 2017, she was made chair of creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.