Joseph Coelho author page

Joseph Coelho biography

Joseph Coelho is a performance poet, playwright and children’s author. His debut poetry collection, Werewolf Club Rules!, won the CLPE Children’s Poetry Award in 2015. He has worked for more than 20 years running creative literacy sessions in schools, and poetry and performance are central to his work with young readers.

Coelho writes for children of different ages across poetry, picture books, middle-grade fiction, young adult fiction and non-fiction. His picture books include the Luna Loves… series, illustrated by Fiona Lumbers, and If All the World Were…, illustrated by Allison Colpoys, which won the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award in 2019. His poetry collection Overheard in a Tower Block was shortlisted for the CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award in 2018 and longlisted for the UKLA Book Awards in 2019.

Coelho’s other work includes the middle-grade Fairytales Gone Bad series, illustrated by Freya Hartas, and the non-fiction title How To Write Poems, illustrated by Matt Robertson. The Girl Who Became a Tree, a story told in poems and illustrated by Kate Milner, was shortlisted for the 2021 CILIP Carnegie Medal. The Boy Lost in the Maze is a young adult novel in verse that blends the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur with the story of a modern London teenager searching for his father.

Coelho was Waterstones Children’s Laureate from 2022 to 2024. During his laureateship, his projects included Bookmaker Like You, the Laureate Library Marathon and Poetry Prompts, a weekly project designed to encourage children to write and perform poetry. In 2024, Frank Cottrell-Boyce succeeded him as Waterstones Children’s Laureate for 2024–2026.

Joseph Coelho teaching resources

• Joseph Coelho’s official website includes poems, poem activities, book information, videos and links to his official YouTube and Instagram channels.
• BookTrust’s Poetry Prompts page provides Joseph Coelho’s 80 Poetry Prompt videos, a downloadable 89 MB resource ZIP and poetry activities covering similes, onomatopoeia, figurative language, writing prompts and performance.
• Oak National Academy’s Werewolf Club Rules poet-focus unit provides ten Year 3 KS2 English lessons with slide decks, worksheets, quizzes and videos covering MORERAPS, If All The World Were Paper, I Am A Writer, poetry performance and letter writing.
• Oak National Academy’s Overheard in a Tower Block poet-focus unit provides Year 4 KS2 English lessons with slide decks, worksheets, quizzes and videos on longer Joseph Coelho poems, reading response, poetic devices, performance and writing tasks.
• The Poetry Society’s MORERAPS resource provides a primary poetry activity in which Joseph Coelho shows children how to write poems using metaphor, onomatopoeia, rhyme, emotion, repetition, alliteration, pattern and simile.
• Scottish Book Trust’s Joseph Coelho: Poetry is for everyone Authors Live page provides a recorded poetry event for ages 9-11, a reading from Our Tower, a poetry-stones classroom activity and links to poetry-making resources.