Ciaran Berry was born in Dublin in 1971 and grew up in Carna, County Galway and Falcarragh, County Donegal. He now lives in New York City and teaches at NYU from which he received a Master of Fine Arts and where he was awarded a New York Times fellowship.

His poems have been widely published in Amercan and Irish journals and selected for Best New Poets 2006 and Best American Poetry 2008. The Sphere of Birds, his first collection, won the Crab Orchard Series Award of Southern Illinois University Press.