Harry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney, now living in Leith. She has lived on four islands, each larger than the last. She has a MA in Theatre Directing from East 15 Acting School and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Stirling. Her work happens in the crunchy places where performance and politics get muddled up.

As a poet, Harry Josephine has toured globally, given feature sets at venues from the Bowery Poetry Club to Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, performed at festivals from the New Zealand Writers Festival to Montreal’s Metropolis Bleu. Her verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia was published by Picador in October 2021 and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. Her poetry collections – Tonguit (Freight Books 2015) and The Games (Out-Spoken Press 2018) – were shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award (twice), the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the Saltire Poetry Book of the Year.

As a theatre artist, Harry Josephine has been featured in the SPILL National Platform, and at festivals including to Forest Fringe (UK), NTI (Latvia), Verb Festival (Aotearoa) and Teszt (Romania). Her one-to-one show What We Owe was listed in the Guardian’s “Best of the Edinburgh Fringe” round-up – in the “But is it art?” section. Her multimedia poetry show Drone debuted in the Made in Scotland Showcase at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe and toured internationally.

What we wrote when Harry Josephine took part in Episode 11, 2024:

Harry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney, living in Leith. Her latest book is the poetry collection Them! (Picador 2024). Her verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia (Picador 2021) won the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year. Her poetry collections The Games (Out-Spoken Press, 2018) and Tonguit (Freight Books 2015) were between them shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Saltire Prize and the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Her stage show of her poetry sequence Drone toured internationally in 2019, and the performance of Deep Wheel Orcadia will tour in 2025. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Stirling.