Biographical Note

MAIRÉAD BYRNE was born in the National Maternity Hospitality in Dublin in 1957, the fifth child and daughter in a family of eight. She learned to read early and was fortified by a father who loved poetry and a mother who baked.

MAIRÉAD BYRNE spent 16 years straight in the Irish education system, emerging in 1977 with a B.A. (Hons) in English Language & Literature from University College, Dublin. She returned for a short but successful stint at Trinity College, Dublin (H. Dip. Ed, 1994) before galloping through an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing (Purdue University,1996) and a Ph.D. in Theory & Cultural Studies (Purdue University, 2001). She taught Old & Middle English at University College, Dublin; English and Drama at Newpark Comprehensive; and writing, literature, and poetry at Purdue University, Ithaca College (New York), the University of Mississippi, and Marshall County Correctional Facility (Holly Springs, MS). Since 2002, she has been an Assistant Professor of English at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island.

MAIRÉAD BYRNE began her professional writing experience as a freelance contributor, theatre critic and feature writer for In Dublin magazine in 1978. In the late 1970s and early 80s, she contributed to Hibernia, The Sunday Tribune, Status, Magill, the Irish Press, the Sunday Independent, the Evening Herald, and Radio Teilifís Éireann, while continuing to write for In Dublin. Her two plays, The Golden Hair and Safe Home, were produced at the Project Arts Centre in 1982 and 1985. A short biography of James Joyce, Joyce-A Clew (with drawings by Henry Sharpe) was published by Bluett & Co., in 1982. Two books of interviews with Irish painters, Eithne Jordan and Michael Mulcahy, were published by Gandon Editions in 1993 and 1994.

MAIRÉAD BYRNE's book Nelson & The Huruburu Bird was published by Randolph Healy's Wild Honey Press in 2003. Wild Honey also published her poem The Pillar as a chapbook in 2000. Her poems have also been published in journals including the Seneca Review, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, Natural Bridge, Readme, VeRT, The Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Callaloo, Folio, Flashpoint, Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, and most recently Court Green, Fulcrum, Masthead, and West 47; and anthologies such as The New Younger Irish Poets (Blackstaff, 1991), Ireland's Women: Writings Past and Present (Kyle Cathie, 1994), Krino 1986-1996: An Anthology of Modern Irish Writing (Gill & MacMillan, 1996), Wild Cards (Virago, 1999), A Fine Excess: Fifty Years of the Beloit Poetry Journal (2000), and Stephen Ellis's anthology of contemporary American poetry, forthcoming in 2004.

MAIRÉAD BYRNE's current projects include a daily poetry blog at www.maireadbyrne.blogspot.com, 2 chapbooks forthcoming in 2004 from Andrew Lundwall and Star Black's Poetic Inhalation and Jane Sprague's Palm Press, second and third books of poetry, and a multi-genre project on American slave, abolitionist, and great writer Frederick Douglass's visit to Ireland in 1845-1846. Recent and current readings include the Cork International Poetry Festival (2003), Cúirt (2004), Zinc Bar (2005), and more. She likes to read.

That's enough about MAIRÉAD BYRNE.