Paula Meehan

Irish poet and playwright Paula Meehan was born in working-class Dublin and earned degrees from Trinity College and Eastern Washington University. She is the author of the poetry collections Return and No Blame (1984); Reading the Sky (1986); The Man Who Was Marked by Winter (1991; US edition 1994); Pillow Talk (1994); Mysteries of the Home (1996); Dharmakaya (2001), which won a Denis Devlin Award; Six Sycamores (2004), with the artist Marie Foley; and Painting Rain (2009). Her plays for children and adults have been staged widely and performed for radio. Meehan has also held workshops with inner-city communities and in prisons. Her numerous honors and awards include the Marten Toonder Award, the Butler Literary Award, and the post of Ireland Professor of Poetry. In 2015, she was inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame for her achievements in poetry.