Joanna Lowry won the 2025 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Pamphlet Competition judged by Imtiaz Dharker for her debut pamphlet The Man Whose Brain Turned to Glass (Bloodaxe Books/Mslexia, 2026). She received an MA Distinction in Writing Poetry from the Poetry School/Newcastle University in 2022, receiving a prize for exceptional performance. She has been shortlisted in several competitions, including the Arvon Prize and the Bridport Prize. In 2018 she was commended in the Manchester Poets and Players Competition and won third prize in the Teignmouth Poetry Competition. She was highly commended by Louise Glück for the Moth Poetry Prize and received second place in the Edward Cawston Thomas Prize in 2023.
Now living in East Sussex, she was born in Wales and spent her childhood in Nigeria. Apart from writing poetry she has lectured and written about photography and video art, and sometimes those different worlds still converge and overlap. And when she isn’t writing she is painting. And those worlds converge too.
Author photo: Alice Street
