Rebecca Swift
Rebecca Swift was a British poet and essayist and the daughter of Clive Swift and Margaret Drabble.
As a student, Swift attended the Camden School for Girls and New College, Oxford.
From 1989 to 1995, she worked as a junior editor at Virago Press. She was fired after Virago was purchased by Little, Brown and Company. In 1992 and 1995, she published Letters from Margaret: The Fascinating Story of Two Babies Swapped at Birth, and Imagining Characters, respectively. She co-founded The Literary Consultancy, an editing company, in 1996 with Hannah Griffiths. The Literary Consultancy has helped many writers, including Prue Leith, Neamat Imam, and Jennifer Makumbi. In 2009, The Literary Consultancy became a founding member of the Free Word Centre.
In 1999, Swift wrote "Are You Reading Me?" for her master's thesis at the Tavistock Clinic. In 2001, she organized a bursary scheme to provide for free editing services to low-income writers. In 2011, she published Dickinson: Poetic Lives, a biography of Emily Dickinson. In 2012, she organized the first digital conference for writers in the United Kingdom, "Writing in a Digital Age" at the Free Word Centre. The conference discussed the current publishing landscape, including Self-publishing.
Swift died on 18 April 2017 of cancer at the age of 53. In her honour, the Rebecca Swift Foundation was formed. In June 2018, it announced the Women Poets' Prize, to be awarded biennially to three poets, at the Second Home Poetry Festival. It will also provide support to winning poets, in partnership with affiliated organizations.
