I am a passionate educator with extensive training and experience in working with students of all ages. I earned a minor in Educational Studies at Bates College and completed fieldwork in a number of settings, including with English Language Learners and students on the autism spectrum. I worked for three years as a Peer Writing Tutor offering assistance to college students with writing-related work across all disciplines and working with professors as a course liaison.

In higher education, at the University of Strathclyde I taught the first-year course Introduction to Creative Writing in the autumn of 2016 and the third-year course Writing Real Life in the spring of 2017. I am currently supervising three MLitt students in their Major Projects. In addition to full-term courses, I have delivered several one-off lectures and workshops on spoken word poetry for university students.

I also offer a variety of creative practice workshops for groups of all ages, sizes, and experience levels. I have previously delivered workshops with organisations including Glasgow Life, Annexe Arts, StAnza (Scotland’s International Festival for Poetry), the Audacious Women Festival, and Scottish Universities Summer School. These workshops can be arranged with me as a solo practitioner or with the I Am Loud Productions team (which includes other experienced facilitators). Workshop themes include:

• writing poetry
• composing poetry for performance
• performance techniques for beginners
• formatting poetry on the page

During the 2020 pandemic I have been facilitating regular poetry workshops with young people through Zoom with Scottish company Mix Up Theatre. Here’s a testimonial regarding my work:

We hired Katie for the purpose of introducing our senior students (aged 11-17) to a bit of writing during drama time, with the intention to create our own poems. Now getting teenagers, even creative minded ones, to write poetry is no small feat yet Katie handled it with ease. She is very passionate about language and words and so engaging that even the shyest pupil managed to come up with something! I can’t thank her enough for her knowledge and enthusiasm and she has made every workshop for our company enjoyable.—Kim , Mix Up Theatre

You can watch an in-depth workshop on erasure poetry I designed and delivered for the I Am Loud Patreon here:

To enquire about workshops, lectures, or other teaching positions, please contact me here or email me via kathryn.a.ailes (at) gmail.com.