Iona Lee

Iona Lee is a writer and artist from Edinburgh, working across poetry, music and live performance. A key figure in Scotland’s spoken-word scene for over a decade, she has performed widely across the UK and Europe, and appeared on radio and TV. In 2022, she won the John Byrne Award for her poetry film 'Away With the Faeries', a retelling of the Tam Lin ballad. Her critically-acclaimed debut collection Anamnesis (Polygon, 2023) was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Award, and won the Somerset Maugham Award. In 2024, she released What I Love About A Cloud Is Its Unpredictability with Trickhouse Press, a collection of visual eco-poetry created using the geolocation software what3words. Iona is also the front woman of the band Acolyte, whose debut EP The Blue Dark will be released in 2025. Her work blends folklore, technology, and personal mythology in inventive and interdisciplinary ways.