Dr Janine Bradbury is a writer, an academic, and a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Writing and Culture at the University of York specialising in 20th- and 21st-century Black literature.
A BBC New Generation Thinker, she’s appeared on BBC Radio 3 and 4 on programmes including Free Thinking, The Essay, Woman's Hour, and Great Lives. Her work on Toni Morrison, Grace Jones, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Key & Peele, and Dave Chappelle has been published by the Guardian, Bloomsbury, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, and elsewhere.
She also writes poetry. Her debut pamphlet Sometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy (ignitionpress 2024) was a Poetry Book Society choice. Her poems feature in Oxford Poetry, and Magma, and Blood & Cord, an Emma Press anthology on early parenthood.
Driven by her passion for popular culture, Janine read American Studies at the University of Sheffield at the dawn of the noughties. Like many other geriatric millennials, she’s inexplicably drawn to all things ‘80s and ‘90s. (Pat Butcher’s earrings, her Now 29 CD, and WrestleMania all mean something to her.) Janine’s produced work on Hulk Hogan, Nirvana, Amy Winehouse, and McDonald’s.
“This is a poet…who really knows what she is doing.” — The Poetry Review
“a masterful ride”…”reminiscent of great songwriters” - The Poetry Book Society
“This is an exciting debut…tender and astute poems that grapple with love, grief, ghosts, and motherhood...” — Rachel Long
“…a deft, wise & exciting new voice in British poetry.” — Rebecca Tamás
“Janine’s poetry is full of beauty and ache and humour.” — Charlotte Shevchenko Knight
2026
Poetry workshop for York Literature Festival for International Women’s Day (March 2026).
2025
Competition Judge and workshop lead for Satire and Silliness: A Poetry Challenge with Jane Austen's House & The Poetry Society's Young Poets Network (September 2025).
Poetry Reading in York with Maya Caspari and Becca Drake (June 2025).
Radio essay for BBC Radio 3 The Essay: Losing Yourself in Books (March 2025).
Poetry reading at the premiere of Women of York produced in collaboration with the Yorkshire and North East Film Archive (YFA/NEFA) and York St John University.
2024
Poetry reading at Rise Up! with Charlotte Shevchenko-Knight and Alex Mepham (November 2024).
Appeared on BBC Radio 4 Free Thinking hosted by Shahidha Bari, alongside Jonathan Egid, Gabriel Gatehouse, Rana Mitter, Elif Shafak, & Tiffany Watt Smith (October 2024).
Panellist at English Association event about teaching (October 2024).
Research talk at the University of York — “Wrestling with Feeling/On Sentimentality” (September 2024).
Publication of poetry pamphlet Sometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy (ignitionpress, Autumn 2024). Launched at The Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden. Poetry Book Society Autumn 2024 Pamphlet Pick.
Reading and conference paper in London called “Sounds Like Teen Spirit: Writing Through Nirvana’s Nevermind” at Other Worlds: Contemporary Ekphrastic Poetry organised by Jane Yeh, with Emily Berry, Anthony V. Capildeo, Alycia Pirmohamed, Padraig Regan, and Kandace Siobhan Walker (May 2024).
Research Talk in York “What Women Wrestle With: Notes on Joanie Laurer” (May 2024).
Appreared on BBC Radio 3’s New Thinking (May 2024).
Interviewed on the Morley Prize Podcast (Series 4, Episode 1, 2024).
Essay: “Notes From the Edge: Reflections on Black Literature, Feeling, and Teaching.” Contemporary Literature from the Classroom Cluster, Post-45 Contemporaries (2024).
2023
Invited speaker at Aberystwyth University: “On the Edge: Teaching Brandon Taylor's Real Life” (October 2023).
Invited speaker at Northumbria University: “Pedagogic Edge-Work: Teaching Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock”. Re-thinking Histories of Popular British Film and Television Conference (June 2023).
Invited speaker at Keele University: “On the Edge: Feeling and Affect in Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water (2021) and Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock (2021)” (April 2023).
On BBC Radio 4: Great Lives withAdjoa Andoh discussing the life of Zora Neale Hurston (January 2023).
Interview piece for the Young Vic: “In Conversation with Kwame Kwei-Armah.” (Young Vic, 2023).
Wrote essay called “On Islands” for theatre programme of Further than the Furthest Thing, dir. Jennifer Tang, written by Zinnie Harris (Young Vic, 2023).
Book chapter: “The Ancestor, Passing, and Imagination in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison edited by Linda Wagner-Martin and Kelly Reames (2023).
The poems “Jellyfish”, “Stranger Days’”, and “Meridian” are published in Blood & Cord: Writers on Early Parenthood edited by Abi Curtis (Emma Press, 2023).
Poems “it’s 1994 & this brown girl thinks she smells like teen spirit” and “American Smooth” are published in Magma 85: Poems for Schools edited by Ashley Hickson Lovence, Gill Ward, and Laurie Smith (2023).
Reading at York Literature Festival with Shash Trevett and Leo Boix (2023).
2022
Talk: Harewood House, WRoCAH Colloquium Keynote: “Creative Practice, Praxis, and the Trinidadian Archive” (May 2022).
Talk: University of Cambridge, Academic Paper: “The Revenant Mulatta” (February 2022).
Talk/Panel: New Writing North Roadshow, Panellist: Northbound Award and Writing the North (February 2022).
Talk: CHASE (Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-east England), Decolonising and Indigenous Research Methodologies Workshop: “Adrian Piper and Toi Derricotte” (January 2022).
Poetry: “Pulled” published via the Aurora Prize for Writing (2022).
Award: Finalist: Aurora Prize for Writing (2022).
2021
Talk: University of Sussex, Academic Paper: “Don Draper’s Mammy: Racial Ambiguity in AMC’s Mad Men” (November 2021).
Talk/Panel: York St John University, Host: In Conversation with Sophie Williams (October 2021).
Poetry: “On the Occasion of My Son Gumming His First Drumstick” in Oxford Poetry 093 (Winter 2021/2022).
Essay/Prose: “Notes on Decolonising the Curriculum.” BLACKLINES: The Journal of Black British Writing, Issue 1, Summer 2021.
Poetry: “SOROR AVE IN DEO” & “The Rum Tasting of the Century” in Black Lines: The Journal of Black British Writing, Issue 1 (2021).
Poetry: Poetry in Aldeburgh | Poetry London Celebrates 100 Issues with editor André Naffis-Sahely, Rachel Long, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Momtaza Mehri and Jemilea Wisdom-Baako (2021).
Project: Co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Scheme (2021).
Award: Nominee: Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship (2021).
Award: Shortlisted: Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize (2021).
2020
Talk/Panel: Durham University, Panellist: “Decolonising the Curriculum” (w/ Jason Arday, Laura Loyola-Hernandez, and Kayo Chingonyi) (May 2020).
Media: BBC Radio 4: Woman’s Hour, interviewed by Jenni Murray about Brit Bennett’s novel The Vanishing Half (2020).
Essay/Prose: “Grappling with Race: Wrestling and Racial (Mis)representation” in Everything Patterned. Wrestling Resurgence, (2020).
Award: Winner: Poetry London Mentorship Scheme Award (2020).
2019
Talk: University of York, Invited Speaker: “Re-imagining Passing: A Feminist Project” (February 2019).
Essay/Prose: “Grace Jones: Cyborg Memoirist.” Music/Memory/Memoir edited by Robert Edgar, Fraser Mann, Helen Pleasance (Bloomsbury, 2019).
2018
Talk: University of Glasgow, Invited Speaker: “Passing and Its Transatlantic Contexts” (November 2018).
Talk/Panel: University of Huddersfield, Panellist: “Why is my curriculum white?” (October 2018).
Essay/Talk: “Navigating the Library as a Researcher of Colour.” UX in Libraries Yearbook / UX in Libraries International Conference Plenary (June 2018).
Talk: Kings College London, Presenter: British Association of American Studies Conference: “Passing Amid Protest” (April 2018).
Essay/Prose: “Parodying Racial Passing in Chappelle’s Show and Key & Peele.” Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak edited by Helen Davis and Sarah Illot (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Essay/Media: “Passing for white: how a taboo film genre is being revived to expose racial privilege.” The Guardian (2018).
2017
Talk/Panel: Everybody’s Reading Festival, Leicester, Panellist: “Performance and Professional Wrestling” (October 2017).
2016
Essay/Prose: “Grappling and Ga(y)zing: Gender, Sexuality, and Performance in the WWE Debut of Goldust.” Performance and Pro Wrestling edited by Broderick Chow, Laine Eero, Claire Warden (Routledge, 2016).
2014
Talk: University of Leeds, Presenter: Race in the Americas (RITA) Seminar: “Beyond the Passing-For-White Figure in Post-Black Comedy” (March 2014).
Talk: Durham University, Invited Speaker: “Using African American Literature in BME Widening Participation / Access” (January 2014).
2013
Talk: University of Manchester & The Runnymede Trust, Invited Speaker: “Breaking into the Academy” (October 2013).
Talk: University of Edinburgh, Invited Speaker: “Using Pedagogy to Celebrate Diversity” (September 2013).
Media: BBC Radio 4: Woman’s Hour, interviewed by Jenni Murray about the career of Zora Neale Hurston (2013).
Essay/Media: “Black, female, and postgraduate: why I cannot be the only one.” The Guardian (2013).
Essay/Prose: "Critical Reception: Zora Neale Hurston and the Paradox of Patronage." Critical Insights: Zora Neale Hurston edited by Sharon Lynette Jones (Salem Press, 2013).