Polly Atkin

  • she/her
nonfiction, poetry, biography, nature writing, memoir
Shadow Dispatches
Academic writer, Biographer, Children's writer, Health writer, Memoirist, Nature writer, Non-fiction writer, Poet
Available for:
Collaboration, Editing, Festivals and other events, Judging, Lecturing and teaching, Library visits, Live readings and performances, Media, Mentoring, Public speaking, Residencies, School visits, Workshops
Contact me via the SoA

I grew up in Nottingham, then lived in East London for seven years before moving north-west in 2006. I’ve lived in the Lake District since 2007.

My published writing is mostly poetry and nonfiction (memoir, biography and social and cultural history and criticism), with a focus on place, nature, and disability.

My debut poetry collection Basic Nest Architecture was published in February 2017 by Seren, followed in October 2021 by my second collection Much With Body, a PBS Winter 2021 recommendation and Laurel Prize longlistee, supported by a 2020 Northern Writers Award and a residency at Cove Park. My third, Emergency Dream, was published by Seren in March 2026. 

My first published nonfiction book was Barbellion long-listed biography, Recovering Dorothy: The Hidden Life of Dorothy Wordsworth (Saraband, 2021): the first to focus on Dorothy’s later life and illness, and place her into Disability History.

My memoir exploring place, belonging and chronic illness, Some Of Us Just Fall: on nature and not getting better, was published by Sceptre in July 2023, and in the US and Canada by Unnamed in March 2024. It was awarded Lakeland Book of the Year in 2024, and longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, 2024.

My third nonfiction book The Company of Owls (Elliott and Thompson: 2024) was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, 2025, and published in the US and Canada by Milkweed in February 2026. 

My next is a slim book in the Saraband ‘In the Moment’ series: Swimming the Seasons: A Freshwater Almanac. This traces a year of swimming outdoors in the rivers, lakes and tarns of the English Lake District, and discusses outdoor swimming from a disability-centred and environmentally conscious perspective. 

My work on nature and disability is included in various anthologies, including an essay on rain and chronic illness in the groundbreaking anthology Moving Mountains: Writing Nature through Illness and Disability (Footnote: 2023).

My first nonfiction story for middle-grade readers is included in Owning It: Our Disabled Childhoods in Our Own Words (Faber: 2025). I have also published essays in academic editions on Romantic era literature and its legacies, including Romantic Tourism, ecocriticism, the Lake District and the Wordsworth circle’s lives.  

In 2022 I became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

I work as a freelancer from my home in the English Lake District, where I co-own historic Grasmere bookshop Sam Read Bookseller.