I came to writing via the scenic, roundabout route. After studying science, I travelled in Europe, the US and Africa; taught English in Sudan; and worked with refugees on the Sudanese-Ethiopian border. I then trained as a nurse. Over the following twenty years, I nursed in the UK and Ireland; wrote a book for the World Health Organisation; and worked as a health adviser with IRC and GOAL in South Sudan, Kenya, Angola, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone. I acquired an MA in Development Studies along the way, at the wonderful Kimmage Manor.

My first poems were published in 1998. My writing life was sporadic until I injured my neck in 2005, when my old life came to an end and I began to build a life around writing, art, and writing workshops. In 2007, I trained as an Amherst Method Writing Group Leader; in 2009 I was Featured Poet in the Stinging Fly. In the same year, I received a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council to work on my first collection, Slow Mysteries, published in 2012 by Doghouse Books.

I was the 2014/2015 SPARK writer in residence at the Leitrim Observer. Leitrim Arts Office published Gleanings, the book that arose out of the residency. In 2013, I received a Mentoring Award from the Arts and Disability Forum, which allowed me to work intensively with Greagoir O Duill to develop a collection inspired by the experience of nursing my mother when she was dying of cancer. This collection, A Dying Language, was published in May 2016 by the Irish Hospice Foundation.

Over the years I have studied and workshopped with many fine writers and writing tutors, including Paula Meehan, Moya Cannon, Cathal O’ Searcaigh, Jane Clarke, Kevin Higgins, Brian Leyden, Dermot Bolger, Dermot Healy, Manchán Magan, Joe Kearney, Ted Deppe, Manda Scott, Kit de Wal, and Pat Schneider.

I started writing a novel set in prehistoric Ireland in the spring of 2018; I finished it in the spring of 2023, and am currently (April 2023) looking for an agent.