Joseph Coelho

Announced as the Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2022-2024, Joseph Coelho grew up on a council estate in Roehampton and started writing poems in secondary school. After studying archaeology at university, he spent some time in Peru and, returning to the UK, started doing performance poetry in schools. With extensive experience in running dynamic creative literacy sessions, Coelho’s work aims to inspire and empower children through stories and characters they can relate to, as well as help to explore feelings and celebrate inclusivity. His laureateship seeks to promote the power of poetry and build the nation’s library membership amongst other goals.

Coelho’s debut children’s poetry collection, Werewolf Club Rules, came out in 2014 and won the CLiPPA (Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award) the same year. Since then, he has written several further lyrical children’s stories and poetry collections including Overheard in a Tower Block (2017), If All the World Were... (2019) and My Beautiful Voice (2022).