Claire Keegan was born in 1968, and raised on a farm as one of a large family in County Wicklow, Ireland.

[1] She travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, when she was 17 and studied English and political science at Loyola University.

[citation needed] There she undertook an MA in creative writing and taught undergraduates at the University of Wales.

[12] In February 2022 the story So Late in the Day was published in The New Yorker,[13] and was released in a hardback edition in 2023 by Faber.

Keegan was the Ireland Fund Artist-in-Residence in the Celtic Studies Department of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto in March 2009.

[20] In March 2021, Keegan and her French translator, Jacqueline Odin, won the Francophonie Ambassadors' Literary Award.