Róisín Kelly is an Irish writer who was born in west Belfast and raised in the rural county of Leitrim, just south of the border with Northern Ireland. After a year as a handweaver on a remote island in Mayo and a Masters in Writing at National University of Ireland, Galway, she now calls Cork City home.

Following the publication of her first full book of poetry, Mercy, by Bloodaxe Books in March 2020, she was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland in order to write her second collection.

Her first chapbook, Rapture, was published by Southword Editions in 2016. The short collection was described by the Los Angeles Review of Books as one of the ‘greatest collections of poetry that the Irish literary canon has to offer’ and by The Irish Times as ‘fresh, sensuous and direct.’

In 2017 she was awarded the Fish Poetry Prize and second place in The London Magazine Poetry Prize.

Publications in which her work has appeared include POETRY, The Guardian, Magma, Ambit, Poetry Ireland Review, Winter Papers Volume 3, Lighthouse, The Mascara Literary Review, Best New British and Irish Poets 2016 (Eyewear 2016), and The Irish Times after she was shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award.

She has been featured poet in The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Atticus Review, and has been published as part of the Dangerous Women Project in association with the University of Edinburgh.

From 2020 onwards she has been working on her second collection of poetry and a novel.