She was a recipient of the Mary Colum Award for being the highest-placed female student in English Literature for the BA in 1984.

She published her first collection of poems, Bar Talk, in 1999, and was a regular presenter on the radio show Writers Inc. Anna Livia FM from 1997 to 1999.

She returned to full-time education in 2002, completing a master's in creative writing at the University of East Anglia (2003) and a PhD in creative and critical writing at the University of Wales Bangor in 2006.

[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Since then she has won awards for her poetry, worked as assistant editor of the UK literary journal Orbis, and teaches workshops on poetry and writing through a number of venues including the Open University.

Novelist Joseph O'Connor (In Sight of Home) :‘a moving, powerful and richly pleasurable read, audaciously imagined and achieved’ Poet Tess Gallagher (Her Father’s Daughter) :‘words are her witching sticks and she employs them with beautiful, engaging intent, the better to make present what has preceded and what approaches.’Co-editions