Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland, in 1972, grew up in Belfast, and holds a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. She has published three collections of poetry: There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here and There (2002), and The State of the Prisons (2005). Her awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award, and the Michael Hartnett Prize for Poetry. She has twice been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She is currently Lecturer in Creative Writing at Queen’s University, Belfast.