Alan Gillis was born in Belfast in 1973. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and son and teaches at Edinburgh University. He is the author of Irish Poetry of the 1930s (OUP, 2005) and co-editor, with Aaron Kelly, of Critical Ireland: New Essays on Literature and Culture (Four Courts Press, 2001). His first collection, Somebody, Somewhere (2004) was short-listed for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and received the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award for best first collection. Hawks and Doves (2007), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize.