Kate Clanchy

Kate Clanchy MBE (born 1965) is a British poet, freelance writer and teacher.

She was born in 1965 in Glasgow to medieval historian Michael Clanchy and teacher Joan Clanchy (née Milne) She was educated at George Watson's College in Edinburgh and at the University of Oxford, where she studied English.

She lived in London's East End for several years, before moving to Oxford where she was a fellow of Oxford Brookes University and served as City Poet.

She is Writer in Residence for Sanctuary Arts at Mansfield College, Oxford.

In 2021 she wrote an essay about the deaths of both her parents from COVID-19.

Clanchy qualified as a teacher in 1989 and has taught since in several different institutions.

Clanchy won an Eric Gregory Award in 1995.

She published three poetry collections between 1996 and 2004.

They won a Forward Prize, the Scottish First Book of the Year (then Saltire Prize) two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards, and a Somerset Maugham Award.

Clanchy has written and adapted for BBC Radio since 2001 with 12 plays and serials produced, notably Hester, A Little Princess, which starred Adjoa Andoh and Enduring Love.

In 2008, she moved into non fiction with a memoir about her relationship with her Kosovan neighbour.

What is She Doing Here? This was republished as Antigona and Me and won the Writers Guild Award.

From 2009-2019 she combined employment as a teacher and a role as Writer in Residence at Oxford Spires Academy, a multicultural comprehensive school.

Noted students included Mukahang Limbu, Shukria Rezaei, and Amineh Abou Kerech.

In 2009 she won both the VS Pritchett and BBC National Short Story Award.

This was followed by a novel, Meeting the English, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and a collection of short stories, The Not Dead and the Saved.

Clanchy was appointed a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2010 and resigned her fellowship in 2023.

In 2015 her broadcast anthology of her pupils' work, We Are Writing a Poem About Home, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award.

In 2018 she edited an anthology of poems written by her students, England: Poems from a School, which was widely reviewed.

In 2018 she was awarded a Cholmondeley Award.

In 2021, Clanchy posted on Twitter encouraging followers to report a Goodreads review of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, stating that they had "made up a racist quote and said it was in my book".

In a response published in The Guardian, Monisha Rajesh argued that although the exact quotes in question were not present, similar offensive stereotypes were present throughout the book.

Clanchy was criticised by other authors, including Chimene Suleyman, Monisha Rajesh and Sunny Singh, who received large amounts of abuse in the following months.

An open letter signed by over 950 people from the publishing industry condemned the targeted harassment.

Clanchy's publishers, Picador, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing, issued three statements of apology in August 2021 and stated that the books would be rewritten.

Further statements of apology were made following an interview with Philip Gwyn Jones, Publisher of Picador, in the Daily Telegraph in December 2021.

Clanchy was defended in articles by Sonia Sodha, who stated that 'the strand of anti-racist thinking that is obsessed with the blame and shame all white people should bear for structural discrimination is (so) corrosive to common cause and understanding' and by Clive Davis, Tomiwa Owolade, Shukria Rezaei, Carmen Callil Amanda Craig and Philip Pullman.

A group of her former students wrote that they had experienced no safeguarding issues and were 'disempowered and distressed' by the critics' allegations.

In December 2021, Clanchy published an article in Prospect magazine on the personal impact of public cancellation.

Consequently, Picador her publisher announced they would no longer publish her books.

In an interview for UnHerd, Clanchy said that the apology put out by Pan Macmillan had been made "over her head" and without consulting her.

She subsequently wrote an article on sensitivity readers.

which continued to be discussed in the following years.

especially in the context of the Roald Dahl revision controversy.

Clanchy is now published by Swift Press.

Clanchy was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours.

Her memoir of her teaching experience,Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2020.

Over the lockdown period of 2020 Clanchy met on Zoom with her students and published their poems on Twitter where they became popular.

In 2021 she published a self-help guide to writing poetry, How to Grow Your Own Poem.