Kathleen McCracken is a Canadian poet and academic. She is the author of seven collections of poetry including Blue Light, Bay and College (Penumbra Press, 1991), which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1992, A Geography of Souls (Thistledown Press, 2002), Moonclaves (Exile Editions, 2007) and Tattoo Land (Exile Editions, 2009).

A bilingual English/Portuguese edition of her poetry entitled Double Self Portrait with Mirror: New and Selected Poems, and featuring a preface by Medbh McGuckian, was published by the distinguished Brazilian press Editora Ex Machina.

She is the recipient of the University of Toronto Review's Editor's Choice Award for Poetry, the Anne Szumigalski Editor's Prize, the 2017 Poet-in-Residence Bursary, Poetry Ireland/Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, several several Ontario Arts Council awards and an Individual Artist Award from the Northern Ireland Arts Council. 

Her poem ‘Moon With Contrail’ was a finalist for The Walrus Poetry Prize, 2017. ‘You Have to Love Them Enough to Let Them Be Wild’ was shortlisted for The Montreal Poetry Prize, 2017 and she was awarded First Prize, Second Prize and Commendation for ‘Basil and the Air Scoop’, ‘High Fidelity’ and ‘My Father’s Last Word’ in the Glebe House Harmony Community Trust Poetry Competition, 2016. Her poem ‘The Fulminoligist’ was a finalist for the WB Yeats Society of New York Poetry Competition, 2016.

Her poems have appeared in The Malahat Review, Poetry Canada Review, Exile Quarterly, Poetry Ireland, The Shop, Revival, Abridged, New Orleans Review and Grain, and she has given readings in Canada, Ireland, Portugal, Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Kathleen received an Honours BA in English and Creative Writing and an MA in English from York University.

Her doctoral thesis examined the anti-parable form in the radio plays of Louis MacNeice, and after receiving a PhD in English from the University of Toronto, she was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship which enabled her to complete two years of post-doctoral research at University College, Dublin.

In 1992 she took up a full-time post as Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Ulster University. She has published scholarly articles the poetry of Paul Durcan, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson and Derek Mahon, on the documentary films of John T. Davis, and on First Nations Canadian writing.

Kathleen's teaches Creative Writing, with specialisation in poetry, at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She also teaches in the areas of American countercultures, Canadian and American indigenous literatures, literature of the North American West, gender and writing, and poetry and the visual arts.