Dennis O’Driscoll was born in Thurles, County Tipperary in 1954. He has written eight books of poetry, two chapbooks and a collection of essays and reviews. He has also edited and compiled a volume of contemporary quotations about poets and poetry. Among numerous anthologies in which his work appears are Staying Alive (Bloodaxe), Scanning the Century (Penguin), 20th Century Irish Poems (Faber) and The Poetry [Chicago] Anthology (Ivan R. Dee). A substantial selection of his work is included in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry 1 (Wake Forest University Press, USA, 2005). His awards include a Lannan Literary Award in 1999, the 2005 E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the 2006 O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry from the Center for Irish Studies in Minnesota.

Mary O’Malley was born in Connamara and educated at University College, Galway. She spent many years living in Portugal before returning to Ireland in the late 1980s and beginning a poetry career in 1990 with the title A Consideration of Silk from Galway-based publisher Salmon. She has since published six other books including a New and Selected. Her latest books have all been published by British house Carcanet. She is a popular reader of her own work and is frequently invited abroad to read or to teach. Her poems have been translated into several languages.