Erin Fornoff is an American-born, new Irish citizen from the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Called a ‘story-telling poet’ and ‘as close to music as poetry gets,’ she has performed at hundreds of festivals and events across Ireland, the UK, and the USA, including twice at Glastonbury Festival and a national Irish and UK tour. She has featured on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, at Hozier and James Taylor concerts, and her poems have been included in Best New English and Irish Poets 2016. Her debut collection Hymn to the Reckless (Dedalus Press, 2017) was shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award for best first collection in Ireland and named by The Millions as a ‘Must Read.’
Her title poem ‘Hymn to the Reckless’ featured on posters and curricula nationwide for Ireland’s National Poetry Day and won the Stanza Slam and Listowel Originals Competition. In 2014 she released a chapbook, Folk Heroes, and received an Arts Council bursary for her first novel Better People, set in the nonprofit world of Washington, DC. She was co-founder and Programme Director of Lingo, Ireland’s first ever spoken word festival.
She has toured Ireland three times with spoken word shows Ireland Is Every Blooming Thing and We Are an Archipelago, the latter of which received a four-star review in the Irish Times. She was Writer in Residence for Ireland’s Inland Waterways in 2022.
Her essays and poems have been published in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Architecture Ireland, Rogue, Penduline, and many others.
She has undertaken commissions for RTÉ Culture Night at Dublin Castle, The Volunteers with street artist Joe Caslin, Front Line Defenders, Dóchas, Pieta House, and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. The film of her poem ‘Home’ won its category at the Berlin Underground Film Festival.
