Karen McCarthy Woolf writes poetry, drama and short fiction for print, online, broadcast and live platforms. In 2005 her play Dido, based on the life of a mixed-race girl who grew up in Kenwood House, Hampstead in the 1760s, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She was also writer in residence at the Museum of Garden History and literature development agency Spread the Word. Her poetry chapbook The Worshipful Company of Pomegranate Slicers was selected as a New Statesman Book of the Year in 2006. her first full-length collection, An Aviary of Small Birds, is published by Carcanet in 2014. She has taught creative writing for agencies The Photographers' Gallery, City Lit, Southbank Centre, English PEN, the Arvon Foundation and others. In 2010 a selection of her recent poetry was published in Ten: new poets from Spread the Word (Bloodaxe, ed. Bernardine Evaristo and Daljit Nagra), an anthology showcasing the work of ten new poets selected for the The Complete Works development programme, and in 2014 her anthology Ten: the next wave is published by Bloodaxe with the Complete Works. She has also edited two other anthologies, Bittersweet: Black Women's Contemporary Poetry (The Women's Press, 1998) and Kin (Serpent's Tail, 2004). She is an associate editor of Wasafiri, on the editorial board of Magma, and reviews for Modern Poetry in Translation.

Ten: the new wave presents poetry from some of the most exciting new poets in Britain today. Mona Arshi, Jay Bernard, Kayo Chingonyi, Rishi Dastidar, Edward Doegar, Inua Ellams, Sarah Howe, Adam Lowe, Eileen Pun and Warsan Shire took part in The Complete Works 2 mentoring project an initiative promoting diversity and quality in British poetry.