Heather Taylor



Heather Taylor (born 9 September 1977 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) is a Canadian poet, writer, filmmaker, and social media and community specialist. Taylor studied music, acting and writing in western Canada.

Poetry and Performance
In the UK, she was a featured performer at events/ venues including Spit Lit, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Borders, Poetry Café, Book Slam, RADA, Camberwell Arts Festival, Harrow Festival, Runnymede International Literature Festival, Penned in the Margins, and Glastonbury Festival. She has also performed at the Arnolfini Gallery (Bristol) and Guardian Newsroom as part of the Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa project and has been a member of Apples and Snakes and Malika’s Poetry Kitchen.

From 2005-2007, Taylor toured the 2-woman poetry and music show, Accents on Words with Aoife Mannix. It was launched at the Poetry Café in London in November 2005 and was performed at a number of venues, including The British Library with BBC Radio London, BAC with Apples and Snakes, The Aran Islands (Ireland) and India with the British Council for Mumbai Poetry Live. In December 2007, Heather Taylor took part in first Belgrade International Poetry festival "Beogradski Trg".

Past projects also include poetry and performance with the BlackFriars Settlement (girls aged 11– 16) and Women’s Library. She has two full poetry collections: Horizon & Back (Tall Lighthouse, UK, 2005) and Sick Day Afternoons (Treci Trg, Serbia, 2009).

Theatre and Radio
As a playwright, Taylor's work has been seen at the Tricycle, Soho Theatre, Greenwich, the Pleasance, Etcetera Theatre & Theatre 503 in London as well as New Place in St. Albans, G12 in Glasgow as part of the NewWriting NewWorlds Festival. She graduated with an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from City University. Her play Prisms was the Sunday Play on Resonance FM 16 December 2010.

Film
In 2008, Taylor later co-wrote a Bengali western called The Last Thakur. It was a Channel 4 co-production with Artificial Eye as the distributor. The film was received well by critics and Sight & Sound magazine named The Last Thakur "one of the most confident British debut features since Asif Kapadia’s The Warrior (2001)… with which it shares an Asian location and language and a welcome belief in the primacy of visual storytelling."

The film premiered at the London Film Festival and was shown at the Dubai International Film Festival, Mumbai International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and others and finally had its theatrical release in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2009.

The short documentary, Wild West Dream, was produced and co-directed by Taylor through Red on Black Productions and was the official selection at the Atlantic Film Festival and the Edmonton International Film Festival in 2009.

In 2011, Taylor created the web series Raptured which is distributed by Koldcast. In 2012, she released the food series, Home Baked Stories.

Social media
Taylor is currently the North American Editorial Director for Econsultancy. She was the former Corporate Community Manager for the BBC, social media and PR manager for Giffgaff and the former editor and filmmaker for PayPal’s Let’s Talk social media and consumer advocacy website. While in that role, in addition to PayPal related topics, she regularly produced video interviews with experts in mobile, finance, social media and web development.

In 2011, she was listed by Brand Republic as one of the top 200 most influential bloggers.

Taylor organised the clean up in Clapham Junction after the London Riots in August 2011 and led what is now referred to as the Broom Army. She won a Wandsworth Community Champion award for her efforts.

Poetry Collections

 * Sick Day Afternoons (Popodnevna Bolovanja) (2009), ISBN 86-86337-29-0
 * Horizon and Back (2005), ISBN 1-904551-17-3
 * She Never Talks of Strangers (2003), a chapbook, ISBN 1-904551-07-6.