Jay Rafferty

Jay Rafferty was born in County Armagh, Northern Ireland on Bloomsday 1997. He studied at St Patrick’s Grammar School, the same secondary school the Irish poet Paul Muldoon attended.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Ulster University (with a brief stint at San Diego State University) during which time he presented a paper at the SDSU Research Symposium, featured on a student panel at the Willa Cather Conference, attended several John Hewitt International Summer School events and competed in the All-Ulster Poetry Slam finals.

His undergraduate thesis was concerned with advocacy for the New Adult genre with a specific focus on the work of Bryan Lee O’Malley and the web-series Bee and Puppycat. In 2020 he completed his master’s degree studies, again at Ulster University, with a heavy concentration on creative writing studies.

Since graduation he has been published widely in several literary journals throughout the United States and the UK. His poetry was nominated for the Best of the Net awards in 2021 by Sage Cigarettes Magazine, which he would later go on to join as Social Media Manager, and more recently as Poetry Editor. In these positions he has spearheaded book reviews, artist interviews and pride month features for the magazine’s website. March 2022 saw the release of his debut chapbook, Holy Things and was quickly followed by his second chapbook, Strange Magic, in June.

He is an uncle, an eejit and a terrible pool player.