Maureen Boyle

Maureen Boyle grew up in Sion Mills in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. She studied at Trinity College Dublin and the universities of East Anglia, London, Ulster, and Queens. In 2004 she was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Prize for an unpublished collection. She was awarded Arts Council bursaries in 2006, 2007, and 2009—including a travel bursary to help with the writing of The Work of a Winter. In 2007 she was awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize and the Strokestown International Poetry Prize. In 2011 she was awarded an ACES (Artist’s Career Enhancement Award) from the Arts Council Northern Ireland. She lectures in Creative Writing with the Open University and teaches English in St Dominic’s High School, Belfast. She is a member of the committee of the John Hewitt Society and helps to organise the International John Hewitt Summer School and other arts events for them. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with her husband, the writer and journalist, Malachi O’Doherty. She is currently completing her first collection of poems.