NIGEL MCLOUGHLIN was born in Enniskillen in 1968. He graduated from Teach na hÉigse (Poets' House) and holds an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing and was recently conferred with a PhD from Lancaster University. His work has twice been short-listed for the Hennessy Award, and he has been among the runners-up in the Kavanagh Award and The New Writer Poetry Prizes. His first collection, At The Waters' Clearing, was published

in 2001, and was followed in 2004 by Songs For No Voices. His poetry and translations from the Irish and German have been published in journals and anthologies. In 2002 he co-edited Breaking The Skin, an anthology of new Irish poets. His third collection of poems, Blood, appeared earlier this year.

www.nigelmcloughlin.com

NESSA O'MAHONY was born in Dublin. Her first collection is Bar Talk (1999) and a new collection Trapping a Ghost appeared earlier this year from Bluechrome. In 1996 she was joint winner of the Kerry International Summer School Poetry Competition and was short-listed for The Patrick Kavanagh Award. In 1997 she won the National Woman's Poetry Competition and was short-listed for the Sunday Tribune / Hennessy New Irish Writing Award. She is administrator of the Dublin Writers Workshop website, and edits a quarterly online literary magazine, entitled Electric Acorn. She lives in Wales.

JOSEPH WOODS was born in Drogheda in 1966. He studied science and holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Lancaster. Widely published, he has read as far afield as Russia and India. In 2000 he won the Patrick Kavanagh Award for an unpublished first collection, and that book duly appeared in 2001, entitled Sailing to Hokkaido, from the Worple Press. Earlier this year, his second collection, Bearings, appeared from the same publisher. Since 2001 Joseph Woods has been Director of Poetry Ireland.