Larne writer and teacher awarded bursary for mentorship at prestigious Faber Academy in London

Jen hopes the experience will help her to complete her first poetry collection, The Gathering, which explores themes such as gender, identity, work, and societal expectations.

She previously picked up the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2022 for her poem, ‘To an Unborn Daughter’.

The award was launched by the Community Arts Partnership (CAP) as part of the Poetry in Motion Community’s ‘Making Memories’ project back in October 2015.

A former journalist at the Larne Gazette, Jen later worked as a press officer for the Ulster Unionist Party, before beginning her training as a teacher in 2005.

After completing her first year of teaching at Larne Grammar School, she moved to Bahrain to teach at top international school, St Christopher’s. “After four years, I returned home and started working at Belfast Royal Academy, where I’ve been happily settled ever since,” she said. “I love teaching. Writing and education mean everything to me. It’s all I want to do – that and a bit of gardening with my dog!”

An editor for the Belfast Review, Jen’s work has been featured in The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Jukebox, Seaside Gothic, The Irish Times, BBC Radio, Lumpen Magazine, The Waxed Lemon, Skylight 47 and more.

Jen expressed her thanks to Faber Academy and the Arts Council Northern Ireland for facilitating her place on the mentorship programme.

Faber Academy was set up in 2008 and provides manuscript assessments and mentorships for upcoming writers.

One of the world's top independent publishing houses, Faber itself was founded in 1929. It is home to some of the foremost voices in fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama – including T. S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Harold Pinter, Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett, William Golding, Seamus Heaney and Kazuo Ishiguro.

With a backlist that includes thirteen Nobel laureates and six Booker Prize winners, Faber continues to publish some of literature’s best-known names today, including Sally Rooney, Max Porter, Simon Armitage, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Rachel Cusk.