Dr Rebecca Tamás

Overview

Dr Rebecca Tamás is a poet, nonfiction writer and critic. Her research specialisms are environmental nonfiction, memoir, nature writing, contemporary poetry, feminsit poetry and ecopoetry.

Her first collection of poetry, WITCH was published in 2019 by Penned in the Margins, a book of feminist poetics, centring feminist perspectives on occult experience, and unruly female identified bodies. The writing of WITCH was supported by an Arts Council funding. WITCH was a Guardian, Times, Telegraph, The White Review, Irish Times, The Paris Review and BBC Radio 4 Open Book Book of the Year 2019, as well as a Paris Review Staff Pick and a Poetry Society Recommendation. WITCH has been adapted into a modern opera, by composer Freya Waley Cohen and librettist Ruth Mariner, and has been performed by the Tippet Quartet at venues including the Royal Academy of Music. WITCH has also been adapted into a dance performance by choreographer Kate Mcintosh for The Kaaitheater Brussels. Poems from WITCH have been translated into Romanian, Hungarian and Italian.

Rebecca was the joint winner of the £10,000 Manchester Poetry Prize 2016, and was a 2017 Fenton Arts Trust Writing Fellow. She was joint editor, with Sarah Shin, of 'Spells: Occult Poetry for the 21st Century,' published by Ignota Press in 2018, and her poetry has been published in journals including The London Review of Books, Granta, The Chicago Review, Poetry Review, Poetry London, The White Review, The New Statesman, Magma and many more. She is Associate Editor of Oxford Poetry Magazine, and the awardee of the 2024 Sylvia Canfield Winn Fellowship for Environmental Writing.

Rebecca's book of environmental literary and artistic criticism, 'Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman', was published by Makina Press in October 2020, and was longlisted for The Rathbones Folio Prize 2021. This book has an interdisciplinary focus – considering folklore, political and critical theory, and radical history. Strangers has been published in translation in Spanish, Catalan and Turkish. 

Rebecca's writing has appeared in The Financial Times, The Guardian, The i, The London Review of Books, Granta, Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Chicago Review and many others. Rebecca has undertaken writing and editing commissions and collaborations for organisations including The Wellcome Trust; NTS Radio; Radio 4’s Short Cuts; Magma Poetry and Abridged Magazine.

Rebecca obtained her PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from The University of East Anglia in 2017, and was the William Sharp Memorial Scholarship Student for her MA in Creative Writing at Edinburgh University, where she graduated in 2012.

Rebecca's second book of nonfiction, 'The Book of Mysteries: Wild Time and the Ritual Year,' will be published by Pushkin Press in 2026. Her second collection of poetry, 'The Fisher King' will be published by Fitzcaraldo Editions in 2027.

Qualifications

• PhD in Creative and Critical Writing, The University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
• MA in Creative Writing, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
• BA (Hons) in English Literature and Creative Writing, Warwick University, United Kingdom

Employment

• Staff Experience Lead, City, University of London, United Kingdom, August 2024 - present

Publications by category