Jay Bernard

At the Institute, I will work on developing my approach to writing from primary qualitative research, with the aim of deepening my creative engagement with social history.

Jay Bernard (FRSL, FRSA) is an interdisciplinary writer and artist from London whose work is rooted in social histories. Jay was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2020 and is the winner of the 2017 Ted Hughes Award for their first collection Surge. Recent work includes My Name is My Own, a physical performance piece in response to June Jordan premiered at Southbank Centre’s Poetry International; Joint, a poetic-play about the history of joint enterprise; Crystals of this Social Substance, a sound installation at the Serpentine pavilion; and Complicity, a pamphlet based on the collection at the Tate. Jay was a 2022-2023 DAAD literature fellow in Berlin.