Clare Shaw was born in Burnley, UK in 1972. As well as being a poet, Clare is also a mental health trainer and consultant and has taught and published widely in the field. Along with the novelist Winnie M Li, Clare was the recipient of a Royal Society of Literature Literature Matters award in 2019, creating workshops and an online resource for survivors of trauma. Clare's work has been shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award for Poetry and Highly Commended in the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Clare recently recently received a Northern Writers' Award for work that appears in Towards a General Theory of Love.