Michael McCarthy grew up on a farm in West Cork, Ireland. His first poetry collection Birds’ Nests and Other Poems won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, and his latest collection – ‘At the Races’ (Smith/Doorstop, 2009) – was the overall winner of the 2008 Book & Pamphlet Competition, chosen by Michael Longley, and The Healing Station (smith|doorstop, 2015) was chosen as a Book of the Year by Hilary Mantel in the Guardian. His children’s books have been translated into seventeen languages. He worked as a priest in North Yorkshire. Fr Michael died in July 2018.