Katie Ailes

Image credit: Jack Hinks

Dr. Katie Ailes is a poet, educator, producer, academic, and dancer based in Edinburgh. Originally from Pennsylvania, she moved to Scotland in 2014 on a Fulbright Award and has devoted her career to supporting and innovating within the Scottish live literature scene.

Katie is an acclaimed spoken word poet whose work explores themes of identity, migration, and compassion through a fiercely feminist lens. She has performed her poetry at festivals across the UK and Europe including Prague Fringe, Brighton Fringe, StAnza, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and nine runs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 2023 she was the Glastonbury Festival Poet in Residence. Her poetry has been published widely and her poem ‘Outwith’ was chosen as one of the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best of the Best Scottish Poems in 2019. 

In addition to her solo work, since 2015 Katie has worked with I Am Loud CIC, Scotland’s premiere spoken word organisation. She has performed with Loud Poets across the UK and Europe and co-produced hundreds of events, videos, podcasts, and other projects. As I Am Loud’s Director of Education and Access, she facilitates poetry workshops across the UK and Europe and leads the Loud Poets Writing Club.

Katie is a Fulbright Scholar and one of the UK’s foremost academics on spoken word poetry. Her PhD ‘The Performance and Perception of Authenticity in Contemporary UK Spoken Word Poetry’ (University of Strathclyde, 2020) involved a mass interview project including 70 poets across the UK. Katie’s research has also focused on national identity in contemporary Scottish poetics. In 2015 she co-organised a major conference on cultural engagement with the 2014 independence referendum, and the following year she co-edited the anthology ‘Aiblins: New Scottish Political Poetry’ (Luath Press, 2016).

Katie is also a classically trained dancer and choreographer interested in the intersection between speech and movement. In 2022 she created two new choreopoems reimagining maligned women from Scottish literature and mythology, “Cutty Sark” (commissioned by the Scottish Storytelling Centre and Edinburgh City of Literature) and “Bean Nighe” (commissioned by Push the Boat Out Festival). In 2023 she served as Choreographer and Story Editor for the short documentary “Big Moves” (dir. Sarah Grant).

To contact Katie for bookings, workshops, or any other queries, please click here or email Katie directly via kathryn.a.ailes (at) gmail.com.