About Ruth O'Callaghan
Ruth O'Callaghan was born in London and lives there. She taught children with special educational needs for many years before she gave her time to poetry.
She has published seventeen collections with Shoestring Press, Salmon Poetry, Two Rivers Press and others, from Where Acid Has Etched (2007) to Threads (2026). Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Magma, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Stand and The London Magazine, and in more than twenty anthologies.
Fellowships, residencies and awards
| 2006 | Prizewinner, The Silver Wyvern, Poetry on the Lake International Festival |
| 2008 | Hawthornden Fellowship |
| 2009 | Arts Council award to work with women poets in Mongolia, which led to the anthology Echoes from the Steppe |
| 2010 | Gold Medal for Poetry, XXX World Congress of Poets, Taiwan |
| 2010 | Heinrich Böll residency, Achill Island, Ireland |
| 2014 | Heinrich Böll residency, a second time |
| 2017 | Writer in residence, Siena Art Institute |
Readings
Ruth has read in Europe, Asia and the United States, with a tour of Wisconsin and Illinois in 2011 and readings in New York and Boston in 2012. One American audience was on a buffalo farm, where, in her words, "the buffalo outnumbered the poets". She launched Wringing Blood at the Gibraltar International Literary Festival in 2018, and has read and led workshops at the Oxford Literary Festival.
Other work
Ruth judges poetry competitions, among them the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society's Open Competition in 2019, and has judged for the Koestler Trust, whose awards are for writing and art by people in prison. She is the poet for Strandlines, a community writing project at King's College London.
She also writes for the theatre. She was a finalist in an international playwriting competition set up by the producer Sonia Friedman, and her work has been staged at the Soho Theatre, the Old Red Lion and the White Bear.