Zoë Brigley was born in 1981 and grew up in Caerphilly in the Rhymney Valley. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003 and received an Academi bursary in 2005. Her first book of poems, The Secret (Bloodaxe Books, 2007), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008. Her second collection, Conquest (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is also the co-editor of a volume of scholarly essays, Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives (Routledge, 2010), and a collection of women’s poetry, Bluebeard’s Wives (Heaventree, 2007). She has taught creative writing at Warwick University and at University of Northampton, where she is a Research Fellow, and is currently living in Pennsylvania, USA.