Kathleen McCracken was born in Dundalk, Ontario, in 1960.
Her collections include Blue Light, Bay and College (Newcastle, Ontario, Penumbra Press, 1991), which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1992; A Geography of Souls (Saskatoon, Thistledown Press, 2002); Mooncalves (Toronto, Exile Editions, 2007); and Tattoo Land (Exile Editions, 2009).
She has been the recipient of the University of Toronto Review’s Editor’s Choice Award for Poetry (1985) and the Anne Szumigalski Editor’s Prize (2002), and has held several Ontario Arts Council Writers’ Grants. She was runner-up in the National Poetry Contest (1998) and shortlisted for the Canadian Poetry Chapbook Competition (1999).
She has published scholarly articles on the poetry of Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon and Ciaran Carson,as well as on the documentary films of John T Davis, Irish cinema and First Nations Canadian Writing. A critical monograph entitled Radical Vision: Reading the Poetry of Paul Durcan is forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books.
Kathleen has lived in Ireland for twenty years and is currently Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland.
