I was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and I came to America in 1977. Much of my writing has emerged from the sense of living between two worlds—not only Ireland and the U.S., but the past and the present. The world in which I grew up was predominantly working-class, Irish and Catholic. We never traveled and I had little sense of the rest of the world. Nowadays Ireland is very much part of Europe and my immediate family includes Americans, Czechs, Germans, Swiss, Poles, and Russians, as well as friends of various backgrounds and ethnicities. I feel fortunate to live in Burlington, Vermont, with my husband, poet Daniel Lusk, and to teach literature and creative writing at the University of Vermont.