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 (UK) in 2002 and winner of the Michael Hartnett Award in 2003, Juniper Street (2006) and Spindrift (2009), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Poetry prizes include the Hennessy Award, the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize, Strokestown International Poetry Award, the Stand Magazine Poetry Prize, and runner-up in the Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition (2003).
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).
She now lives in Manchester where she teaches in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester.
Source: The Gallery Press