Masterclass with Karen McCarthy Woolf

About this event

Sharpen your skills and develop your practice with some of poetry's leading lights.

Bad Betty masterclasses take place in the afternoon prior to each Bad Betty Live show, and offer a chance to work closely with one of the featured acts.

About the facilitator:

KAREN MCCARTHY WOOLF

Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf, FRSL, PhD, is the author of three poetry collections and editor of seven literary anthologies. Her novel in verse, Top Doll, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and her début, An Aviary of Small Birds was an Observer Book of the Year.

As a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at UCLA she was poet in residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights, where she wrote her latest collection, Unsafe (Bloomsbury, 2026): a ‘taut’ and ‘hypnotic’ (Guardian) poetic meditation on the sacred, the city and our access to nature. In 2025 she won a Society of Authors Cholmondeley Award and the Jerwood Prize for Poetry (England). She has performed her work everywhere from The Royal Festival Hall, Kings Place and Barbican, to venues across Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Her broadcast credits include a reversioning of Homer’s Book of The Dead for BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week; Miss Birdie’s Letter, BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears and a multi-authored reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando shortlisted for a BBC Audio Award.

She has worked on many collaborations, most recently as a librettist on Divine Feminine, a spatially-realised electronic and acoustic choral opera with the British-Iranian composer and turntablist Shiva Feshareki.

Her poems are translated into Croatian, Dutch, Italian, Macedonian, Spanish and Turkish; have been exhibited by Poems on the Underground; produced as animation and dance; and dropped from a helicopter over the Houses of Parliament in a poetry ‘bombing’ by the Chilean collective Casagrande.

Venue & Access:

This workshop takes place in the Learning Room at New Art Exchange (NAE). There is a lift and accessible toilets. The building is fitted with induction loops for enhanced sound. Disabled parking is available on request. Full accessibility info here.

New Art Exchange (NAE) is the UK’s largest gallery dedicated to contemporary visual arts from the Global Ethnic Majority. Based in Hyson Green, Nottingham, NAE champions inclusivity and equity in the creative industries, nurturing and celebrating talent from diverse backgrounds About Us page on our website.

About Bad Betty:

Bad Betty Press is an award-winning independent poetry publisher, and curator of live literature events taking place across the UK. London-born, Nottingham-based, Bad Betty was set up in 2017 with the aim of showcasing risk-taking poetry, supporting poets’ artistic development and celebrating stories less often told.

Bad Betty is a British Book Awards Small Press of the Year Finalist (2024, 2023), a Michael Marks Publishers' Award winner (2022), and the parent of pamphlet imprint, Little Betty.