From the Falls Road, Belfast, Sophia Hillan was born c 1950 and attended St Dominic's Grammar School for Girls.
Hillan graduated in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Queen's University Belfast, followed by a doctorate.
Hillan studied under Seamus Heaney and later worked with him when she taught in Carysfort College of Education in Dublin.
She then began a more academic career and put her fiction writing on hold for several years.
Hillan was the associate director of the Institute of Irish Studies in Queen's University, Belfast from 1993 to 2003.