Seán Lysaght was born in 1957 and grew up in Thomondgate, Limerick and
studied Arts at UCD. While still a student, he took part in the Castle
readings organised by Claude and Dorina Byrne in King John's Castle,
Limerick. His first poems were published by Jim Kemmy in the Limerick
Socialist. His first collection, Noah's Irish Ark (1989) was followed by
five books from Gallery Press, including Scarecrow (1998), The Mouth of
a River (2007) and translations from Goethe, Venetian Epigrams (2008).
He was awarded the Lawrence O' Shaughnessy Poetry Award in 2007. His
Selected Poems will appear next year. He now lives in Westport, Co.
Mayo.

Burt Kimmelman has published five collections of poetry – Musaics (Sputyen Duyvil Press, 1992), First Life (Jensen/Daniels Publishing, 2000), The Pond at Cape May Point (Marsh Hawk Press, 2002), a collaboration with the painter Fred Caruso, Somehow (Marsh Hawk Press, 2005), and There Are Words (Dos Madres Press, 2007); his volume of poems titled As If Free is forthcoming in 2009 (from Talisman House, Publishers). For over a decade he was Senior Editor of Poetry New York: A Journal of Poetry and Translation. He is a professor of English at New Jersey Institute of Technology and the author of two book-length literary studies: The "Winter Mind": William Bronk and American Letters (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998); and, The Poetics of Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergence of the Modern Literary Persona (Peter Lang Publishing, 1996; paperback 1999). He also edited The Facts on File Companion to 20th-Century American Poetry (Facts on File, 2005) and co- edited The Facts on File Companion to American Poetry (2007).

Harriet O'Carroll was a physiotherapist before she started writing short stories in 1979. She was published in the Beacon and Virago Press, won awards, and appeared in periodicals, anthologies and The Irish Times.  She has been translated into French.  She has also written  radio plays , has had ten plays on RTE Radio 1 and five plays on BBC Radio 4.  A favourite of these, MINUET, was RTE’s selected entry for the Italia Prize and told the story of Jane Austen’s romance with a law student from Limerick.  She also wrote a screenplay version of this story which was optioned by Working Title.

She wrote episodes for GLENROE and FAIR CITY and was an associate storyliner for GLENROE. She also wrote an episode of MONARCH OF THE GLEN.

She wrote a six hour adaptation of Stella Tillyard’s ARISTOCRATS for BBC 1, broadcast in 1999. It continues to be broadcast world wide and has just been issued in DVD. .

She has screenplays in various stages of development. She wrote the original treatment for THE CLINIC for Parallel Films Ltd., and RTE.

For theatre she wrote BOTTLE OF SMOKE, produced by Island Theatre Company and THE TRICKSTER, an adaptation of Moliere’s LES FOURBERIES DE SCAPIN, also produced by Island Theatre Company.

She has been writing poetry intermittently over the years.