Karen McCarthy Woolf is a poet of English and Jamaican parentage. The poem "Outside" from her Seasonal Disturbances was chosen by Carol Rumens as "Poem of the Week" in The Guardian in December 2017. In 2019 McCarthy Woolf was appointed Poet in Residence at University of California, Los Angeles. She won 2nd prize in the 2020 Laurel Prize for her collection Seasonal Disturbances. In 2021 she was one of the judges of the 2020 National Poetry Competition.