Claire Askew was born in 1986 and grew up in the rural Scottish borders. She has lived in Edinburgh since 2004, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing & Contemporary Women's Poetry from the University of Edinburgh. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Poetry Scotland, PANK, The Edinburgh Review and Be The First To Like This: New Scottish Poetry (Vagabond Voices, 2014), and have been selected twice for the Scottish Poetry Library's Best Scottish Poems of the Year. In 2013 she won the International Salt Prize for Poetry, and in 2014 was runner-up for the inaugural Edwin Morgan Poetry Award for Scottish poets under 30 for an earlier version of This changes things, which was published by Bloodaxe in 2016. She was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award for a second time in 2016. This changes things was also shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award 2016, and Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for First Full Collection 2017 and Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017. She runs the One Night Stanzas blog, and collects old typewriters (she currently has around 30). In 2016 she became Edinburgh's first 'Reading Champion', the first writer to be appointed by the Scottish Book Trust to one of four such posts based in Scottish libraries to stimulate and deliver innovative projects around reading in different parts of Scotland. In 2017 she was the first writer to receive the inaugural Jessie Kesson Fellowship.