Rita Ann Higgins was born in 1955 in Galway, where she still lives. One of 13 children, she left school at 14, and was in her late 20s when she started writing poetry. She has since published nine books of poetry, including Sunny Side Plucked (Poetry Book Society Recommendation) (1996), An Awful Racket (2001), Throw in the Vowels: New & Selected Poems (2005) and Ireland Is Changing Mother (2011) from Bloodaxe, and Hurting God: Prose & Poems (2010) from Salmon. Throw in the Vowels was reissued in 2010 with an audio CD of her reading her poems. Her plays include Face Licker Come Home (1991), God of the Hatch Man (1992), Colie Lally Doesn’t Live in a Bucket (1993), Down All the Roundabouts (1999), The Plastic Bag (2008) and The Empty Frame (2008). Her many awards include a Peadar O’Donnell Award in 1989 and several Arts Council bursaries, and she is a member of Aosdána.