Nessa O'Mahony was born in Dublin, Ireland. She has published five books of poetry -- Bar Talk, appeared (1999), Trapping a Ghost (2005), In Sight of Home (2009), Her Father’s Daughter (2014) and The Hollow Woman on the island (2019). Arlen House published her debut work of crime fiction, The Branchman, in 2018. She completed a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at Bangor University in 2006. She is a recipient of three literature bursaries from the Arts Council and was Writer Fellow at the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies in UCD in 2008/09. Novelist Joseph O’Connor described her verse novel In Sight of Home as ‘a moving, powerful and richly pleasurable read, audaciously imagined and achieved’ whilst poet Tess Gallagher said of Her Father’s Daughter that ‘words are her witching sticks and she employs them with beautiful, engaging intent, the better to make present what has preceded and what approaches.’  She edited a special issue on Irish poetry for the Dutch journal, De Brakke Hond.  In 2016, she co-edited with poet Siobhan Campbell a book of critical essays on the work of Eavan Boland – Eavan Boland: Inside History is published by Arlen House. In 2017, she co-edited with poet Paul Munden Metamorphic: 21st Century Poets Respond to Ovid. She produces and presents a monthly podcast for writers called 'The Attic Sessions'.

Photo credit: Jack Zibluk
(c) ​​​​​​Nessaomahony - CC BY-SA 4.0, via wikicommons