Contact
Email: hj@harryjosephine.com
Twitter: @HJosephineGiles
Facebook: @HJosephineGiles
Instagram: @HJosephineGiles
Photos
You can use these photographs for publicity purposes. Please always credit the photographer, Rich Dyson.
Booking
You can contact me directly to book me for projects and workshops at hj@harryjosephine.com.
When requesting a booking, please state in the initial email what the fee will be. The Society of Authors, my union, offers guidance on rates. Please also state how you will incorporate accessibility into the event or project (e.g. does the venue have level access? will there be BSL interpretation?) and, while the COVID-19 pandemic continues, what infection mitigation you will be putting in place (e.g. will masks be recommended and provided?) For advice on accessibility in literature, see the Inklusion Guide, and for advice on remote events, hybrid events and equality of access during the pandemic, see this blog from Polly Atkin.
Please note that I do not do events where all the participants are white, and I do not do events which have not considered accessibility and pandemic mitigation. It’s also important to remember when considering diversity in events that when someone is in the position of being “the only one” in the event, that adds extra strain and pressure, and this goes for me as well.
Bio
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. Harry Josephine’s work generally 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 was a Poetry Book Society Winter Selection. 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.
You can read their full professional credits here. For abbreviated versions of this bio, see this regularly-updated document.
Name and Pronouns
My name is Harry Josephine and it’s good to use that in full in formal settings, or Josie for short and in informal settings. If titles are needed, it’s Dr Giles. I use the pronouns “she” and “they”.
Harry Josephine Giles 