Milena Williamson is from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. She completed her BA in English literature and creative writing from Oberlin College in Ohio. She has an MA and PhD in poetry from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. In 2021, she received the Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in the UK as well as the Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust project award.

Her latest work is Milk & Moon-water (The Emma Press, July 2026). You can pre-order the pamphlet now.

She is also the author of the pamphlet Charm for Catching a Train from Green Bottle Press and the full-length poetry collection Into the Night that Flies So Fast from Dedalus Press. For more about Into the Night that Flies So Fast, you can read her feature Bridget Cleary and a poetry journey which appeared in The Irish Times.

She is a member of Femina Culpa, a new poetry collective that explores stories of nineteenth-century women through archival materials and the criminal justice system.