Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, and raised in Belfast. She earned her BA and PhD at Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of numerous books of poetry including Found Architecture: Selected Poems (2020); Parallax and Selected Poems (2013, UK; 2015, US), which won the T.S. Eliot prize and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award; On Balance (2017); Through the Square Window (2009); and The State of the Prisons (2005)
Morrissey was awarded the European Poet of Freedom Literary Award for On Balance, and has also received the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, the
Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and first
place in the 2007 UK National Poetry Competition. She is a professor of
creative writing at Newcastle University in Britain.