The Center for Irish Studies and College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas announced Jessica Traynor as the recipient of the 27th Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. The only prize of its type in the world, the O’Shaughnessy Award is granted to a poet resident in Ireland who makes significant contributions to the country’s cultural landscape and, with thanks to the generosity of the O’Shaughnessy family, the U.S.

Jessica Traynor was born in Dublin in 1984. She is a poet, essayist and librettist, and she is currently the 2023 Arts Council writer-in-residence at Galway University. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was critically acclaimed as one of the best poetry debuts of the year. The Quick, Traynor’s second collection, was a 2019 Irish Times poetry choice. Her most recent book, Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe Books, 2022), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and also an Irish Times poetry books of the year choice for 2022.

Traynor has received received many awards and recognitions for her work. In addition to being named Hennessy New Writer of the Year, she won both the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary and the Listowel Poetry Prize. In 2016, she was named one of the ‘Rising Generation’ of poets by Poetry Ireland. She was the recipient of a Dublin City Council Literature Bursary and was also chosen for the Poetry Ireland Introduction Series.

She is an inaugural Creative Fellow of University College Dublin, where she completed her master’s degree in creative writing in 2008.