Ryan Van Winkle, Poet, Critic, Podcaster Guest Speaker

Ryan Van Winkle was Poet in Residence at Edinburgh City Libraries following a successful run as the Scottish Poetry Library’s first-ever Reader in Residence. A practiced podcaster, he presented and produced podcasts for the SPL for seven years, as well as recording podcasts for the Scottish Book Trust. He also presented his own podcast series, Culture Laser. Tomorrow, We Will Live Here was published by Salt in 2010 and won the Crashaw Prize. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, AGNI, Poetry New Zealand, Gutter, Poetry Scotland, New Writing Scotland, The Prairie Schooner, Scotland on Sunday, Northwords Now, and in Carcanet’s 2010 Oxford Anthology of New Poets. His poetry / theatre experiment Red, Like Our Room Used to Feel was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2012 and at the Battersea Arts Centre, The Melbourne Fringe, and in the Room for London at the London Literature Festival in 2013. As a member of Highlight Arts Van Winkle has organized festivals and translation workshops in Syria, Pakistan and Iraq and has co-edited two anthologies: This Room is Waiting: poems from Iraq & Britain (Freight, 2014) and A Change in the Light: poems from Glasgow & Lahore (Sang-e-Meel, 2016). His second collection The Good Dark was published by Penned in the Margins, and won the 2015 Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year award.