Paula Meehan was born in Dublin where she still lives. She was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and at Eastern Washington University. She has published five previous collections of poetry and received many awards for her work including the Denis Devlin Award of the Irish Arts Council (An Chonthairle Ealafon) for Dharmakaya, which Carcanet published in 2000. She has also written plays - for stage (for both children and adults) and for radio - and held a creative writing fellowship at University College, Dublin.  Meehan has worked with inner city communities and conducted workshops in prisons.