Claire Keegan was born in 1968. Her first collection of short stories, Antarctica, received the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and announced her as an exceptionally gifted and versatile writer of contemporary fiction. Her second short story collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published to enormous critical acclaim in 2007 and won her the 2008 Edge Hill Prize for Short Stories. Richard Ford selected her short story Foster as winner of the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award and wrote in the winning citation of her “thrilling” instinct for the right words and her “patient attention to life’s vast consequence and finality". Foster was published in a revised and expanded version in 2010. Claire lives in rural Ireland.

See also: Interview with Claire Keegan from news.scotsman.com