Marina Carr was born in 1964 and grew up in County Offaly. She graduated from UCD in 1987.

Early plays include Low in the Dark, This Love Thing and Ullaloo. The Gallery Press publishes The Mai, Portia Coughlan (Susan Smith Blackburn Award, 1997), By The Bog of Cats (Irish Times/ ESB Award for Best New Play, 1998), On Raftery's Hill, Ariel, Woman and Scarecrow and The Cordelia Dream (December 2008).

Her awards include The Irish Times Best New Play Award, the Dublin Theatre Festival Best New Play Award 1994, a Macauley Fellowship, a Hennessey Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and an E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She has been Writer-in-Residence at Trinity College and was Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2003. She is a member of Aosdána and lives in Kerry.