Mairi MacInnes was born in 1925 in Co. Durham and educated in Yorkshire and at Somerville College, Oxford. In 1954 she married the American scholar and writer John McCormick and went to live with him in West Berlin, then an enclave in Communist East Germany, and from 1959 to 1988 in America, except for years in Mexico and Spain. She and her husband now live in York, England. They have four children and two grandchildren. In the US, she published two collections, and won National Endowment in the Arts, New Jersey Arts and Ingram-Merrill Fellowships.