About

Rachel Bower – Writing, Workshops, Editing

I am an award-winning author and poet from Bradford. My poetry, fiction and academic work has been widely published in journals and magazines, including Magma, The London Magazine, The Rialto, The Simple Things, Stand and The White Review.

My debut novel, It Comes from the River, was published by Bloomsbury in January 2025. My third poetry collection, Bee, was published by Hazel Press in May 2025. I am the author of two other poetry collections, These Mothers of Gods (Fly on the Wall Press) and Moon Milk (Valley Press). I have also published a non-fiction book on literary letters, Epistolarity and World Literature (Palgrave Macmillan).

I won The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2019/20 and the W&A Short Story Competition 2020. My stories have been listed for many other prizes, including The White Review Short Story Prize, the BBC Short Story Prize and the RSL V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize.

I was awarded second place in the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year 2024, and my poems have been shortlisted for many prizes including the Ginkgo Poetry Prize, Best Poem of British Landscape and The London Magazine Poetry Prize.

I edited the Verse Matters anthology with Helen Mort and I am currently editing an anthology with Simon Armitage (Faber & Faber, 2026).

I am a qualified Community Development Worker and I have facilitated creative workshops for many years. I have worked with a wide range of organisations, including schools, youth services, children’s centres, Poet in the City, Sheffield Libraries, Barnsley Museums, Material Stories of Migration, Ignite Imaginations, the British Library, the Universities of Sheffield, Leeds, Dundee, Uppsala, Paris Nanterre and many more. I currently facilitate a wide range of workshops and events, online and in community settings.

I have a PhD in English from the University of Cambridge. I have taught at the University of Cambridge, the University of Leeds and Sheffield Hallam and I am a Trustee of the Ilkley Literature Festival.

I am also a beekeeper, cold water lover, hybrid fitness enthusiast and the founder of Wild Writes, where we run workshops which encourage people to connect with nature and creativity.

My work is represented by Cathryn Summerhayes at Curtis Brown.