BIO
Cecilia Knapp is a poet and novelist and the Young People’s Laureate for London 2020/2021. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward prize for best single poem. She is the winner of the 2021 Ruth Rendell award and has been shortlisted for both the Rebecca Swift Women’s prize and the Outspoken poetry prize. Her debut poetry collection Peach Pig was published by Corsair in 2022 and was the Observer’s poetry book of the month for October. Her poems have appeared in The Financial Times, Granta, The White Review, Wasafiri, Popshot, Ambit, Magma and bath magg and anthologised. She curated the anthology Everything is Going to be alright: Poems for When you Really Need Them, published by Trapeze in 2021. Her debut novel Little Boxes is published by The Borough Press. In 2023, Little Boxes was longlisted for The Authors Club Best First Novel Award. Her second novel Lack will be published in 2026 by The Borough Press.
In 2021 she wrote, curated and presented the BBC radio 4 documentary Powerlines; poetry of the coast. She has appeared as a guest on BBC radio 4’s The Verb, Woman’s Hour and Poetry Please. She has shared her writing extensively at literature events in the UK and internationally with residencies and readings in New York, Paris, Croatia, Switzerland, Scotland and Johannesburg and performances including Reading Festival, Wilderness, Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Cheltenham Literature festival where she was guest curator in 2015. Commissions include Vogue, Mont Blanc, The Tate, The Guardian, The Royal Society of Literature, and The BBC, where she made a short poetry film for BBC iplayer. In 2024 she was commissioned by The Poetry Society and City Bridge Foundation to write poems celebrating some of London’s most iconic bridges.
She has written for The Huffington Post, The Independent, Women’s Health and The Stage. She wrote a regular column for Mslexia magazine from 2020-2022.
Her theatre pieces Finding Home and Losing the Night both opened to sell out London runs at The Roundhouse before touring the UK.
She teaches creative writing in a variety of settings. She is an ambassador for the mental health charity CALM.