John McAuliffe was born in 1973 and grew up in Listowel, County Kerry. He was educated at universities in Galway, Southern Illinois, and Dublin. In 2000 he won the RTE Poet of the Future Award and, in 2002, the Sean Dunne National Poetry Award. He now lives in Manchester, where he co-directs the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing. He has been director of the Poetry Now Festival in Dún Laoghaire since 2004. His first collection, A Better Life (2002), was shortlisted for a Forward Prize.