I’m excited to announce that I’ll be at Ledbury Literature Festival on Friday July 4th with the wonderful Ruth Padel. We’ll be at Burgage Hall from 4pm and if you can’t be with us in person the event is being live streamed on Vimeo. Fabulous!
The festival literature says: In Girl, Ruth Padel offers a fresh and questioning look at girlhood and its icons. Across a triptych of sequences, Ruth Padel unravels the millennia of myth woven around girls. Karen Downs-Barton’sMinx reveals the vibrant but precarious world of a multi-racial Romani family. Uplifting and heart-breaking; a lyrical evocation of a childhood on the edge of society that marks the arrival of a vital new voice.
Karen Downs-Barton is an award winning poet. Minx, her first collection, is published by Chatto and Windus, Penguin Random House in March 2025. Her pamphlet, Didicoy, won the 2022 International Book and Pamphlet Competition and was the Poetry Book Society recommended pamphlet 2023. Her writing incorporates experimental form and multilingualism alongside lyric pieces exploring an Angloromani heritage, times in state child care, and in diverse occupations including a magician's assistant. Karen has appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Verb, Ledbury Literature Festival, and is currently touring, promoting Minx. Karen gained a Doctorate in Creative Writing from King's College, London and is a regular workshop facilitator for Creative Future UK. Follow her on social media at: @downsbarton Instagram, @karendownsbarton.bsky.social
View more posts
Karen Downs-Barton 