PEGGY O'BRIEN grew up in western Massachusetts, where she now lives with her husband. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College, she moved to Ireland and studied at University College Dublin and Trinity College, where she taught for the better part of twenty years. Her poems have appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Yale Review, The Southwest Review and Poetry Ireland Review. As well as being the editor of The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry 1967-2000, she is the author of Writing Lough Derg: from Carleton to Heaney. She travels often in Ireland, where she has a daughter and three granddaughters.