Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone in 1975. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. Feel Free (2018) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize and the Derek Walcott award. 'Up Late' the title poem from his latest collection Up Late (2023) won the Forward Prize for Best Poem. He is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queens' University, Belfast.
