New Editor for Arc's UK & Ireland list

We are delighted to announce that John Clarke, the Director of the Beverley Literature Festival, has agreed to become Arc's new UK & Ireland Editor. John began working as Associate Editor with Arc in 2006 while Jo Shapcott was still Arc's UK Editor, and after she stepped down in 2007 proved to be such an asset to Arc in the interregnum that, in June this year, it was decided to offer him the Editorship.

John was born in Cornwall in 1969 and trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He then went on to study at the University of York and completed his doctoral research on 'Objectivist' poetry in 1999. While teaching American Literature part-time at York, he began to work in museums and galleries as an education officer and workshop leader. He then researched and directed a multi-disciplinary play that toured the UK through the Arts Council touring programme. In 2001 he became the first reader in residence at the Ilkley Literature Festival and subsequently took over the directorship of Wordquake, the East Riding of Yorkshire's literature development organisation. In 2002 he established the Beverley Literature Festival and in recognition of the importance of work done by Wordquake, the organisation was granted Regularly Funded Status by Art Council, England. John now works part-time for Wordquake and tutors in poetry on the part-time creative writing degree course at the University of Hull.

John Clarke is also a poet, widely published in magazines and winner of the First Prize in the City of Nottingham Poetry Competition in 2007 and a runner-up in 2006 and 2008 in the Wigtown Poetry Competition. A selection of his poems will be included in the forthcoming Oxford Poets anthology.