Vona Groarke was born in the Irish Midlands in 1964. Her collections published by The Gallery Press include Shale (1994), Other People's Houses (1999), Flight (2002, shortlisted for the Forward Prize and winner of the Michael Hartnett Award in 2003), Juniper Street (2006). Both Spindrift (2009) and X (2014) are Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Other prizes include the Hennessy Award, the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize, Strokestown International Poetry Award, the Stand Magazine Poetry Prize. Both Spindrift and X have been shortlisted for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Award. In 2008, her version of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's eighteenth-century Irish poem was published as Lament for Art O'Leary. She has been Writer-in-Residence with the National University at Galway and at Maynooth, and was co-holder of the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University (Spring 2004). In Academic year 2005-6 and 2006-7 she taught in English Department at Wake Forest University, North Carolina. A member of Aosdána (the Irish Association to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland) she now lives in Manchester where she teaches in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester.