Face to face

Gillian Allnutt has published 7 major poetry collections: Spitting the Pips Out (1981); Beginning the Avocado (1987); Blackthorn (1994); Nantucket and the Angel (1997); Lintel (2001); Sojourner (2004); and How The Bicycle Shone: New and Selected Poems (2007). Nantucket and the Angel and Lintel were both shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She is also the co-editor of The New British Poetry, 1968-1988 (1988) and is the author of Berthing: A Poetry Workbook (1991).

A Royal Literary Fund Fellow from 2001-2003, Gillian Allnutt teaches Creative Writing, currently at Newcastle University. She lives in Co. Durham.

Gillian Allnutt was born on 15 January 1949 in London, but spent much of her childhood in Newcastle upon Tyne. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and the University of Sussex.

Since 1973 she has taught English and Creative Writing in London and Newcastle upon Tyne, and has also worked as a performer, publisher, journalist and freelance editor. She was a collective member of Sheba Feminist Publishers (1981-3), and from 1983 to 1988 was Poetry Editor at City Limits magazine.