Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in Cornwall. She is of French/Welsh/Pakistani heritage. Her seventh collection, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe Books, 2017) is a Poetry Book Society Choice. She has published six previous poetry collections. Her sixth, Fauverie (Seren, 2014), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. A portfolio of poems from this book won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a 2015 Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors and was the chair of the judges for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize. Her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Serbian and French. She is widely travelled in the Peruvian and Venezuelan Amazon, China, Kazakhstan, Nepal, and Mexico. Her fifth collection, What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo, published by Seren in 2010 (UK) and Black Lawrence Press in 2011 (US), was shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot Prize, Wales Book of the Year, and was Jackie Kay's Book of the Year in the Observer. Two of her previous books, The Zoo Father and The Huntress, were also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and were Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement and Independent. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected Petit as one of the Next Generation Poets.