W.N. Herbert was born in 1961 in Dundee, and educated there and at Brasenose College, Oxford. He is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and has published widely with OUP, Arc, and others, including six books of poetry with Bloodaxe, several collaborative volumes with other poets, and five pamphlets. He has edited best-selling and influential anthologies such as Strong Words (2000) and Jade Ladder (2012). He is also a librettist, a text-led public artist, and a translator, working in collaboration on texts in Bulgarian, Chinese, Dutch, Farsi, and Somali. He has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize, the Forward, and the Saltire, and has gained several PBS Recommendations and other awards, including the Cholmondeley. He was an original New Generation Poet, the first Wordsworth Trust Writing Fellow, and, between 2015 and 2018, the first Dundee Makar or city laureate. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.