Aileen Ballantyne

AILEEN BALLANTYNE is a national newspaper journalist turned poet. She was the staff Medical Correspondent for The Guardian and The Sunday Times. Her journalism has twice been commended at the British Press Awards and her news features on aids in The Sunday Times won the David Boyle (Erskine Hospital) Memorial Award at the Scottish Press Awards.

Aileen recently completed a phd in Creative Writing and Modern Poetry at the University of Edinburgh, where she now teaches an undergraduate course on Contemporary Poetry. In 2015, she won first prize in the Mslexia Poetry Competition for her poem on the Lockerbie disaster and the short poem category at the Poetry on the Lake Festival in Orta San Giulio, Italy. She is also a recent winner of the Scots category of the Wigtown Poetry Prize (2012). In 2018, she received the prestigious Scottish Book Trust New Writers’ Award.

Taking Flight is her first poetry collection.