John F Deane was born in Achill Island in 1943. He founded Poetry Ireland - the National Poetry Society - and The Poetry Ireland Review in 1979. He has published several collections of poetry and some fiction; Won the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry, the Marten Toonder Award for Literature and poetry prizes from Italy and Romania. Elected Secretary-General of the European Academy of Poetry in 1996. Shortlisted for both the T.S.Eliot prize and The Irish Times Poetry Now Award, won residencies in Bavaria, Monaco and Paris. Latest poetry collection “The Instruments of Art”, Carcanet 2005; “In Dogged Loyalty”, essays on religious poetry, Columba 2006; latest fiction “The Heather Fields and Other Stories,” Blackstaff Press 2007. His latest poetry collection, “A Little Book of Hours”, came from Carcanet in 2008. He is a member of Aosdána, the body established by the Arts Council to honour artists “whose work had made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland”. In 2007 the French Government honoured him by making him “Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres”. In 2008 John F. Deane was visiting scholar in the Burns Library of Boston College. 2010 brought the publication of a new novel, "Where No Storms Come", and a new collection of essays, "The Works of Love". His new collection of poems, "The Eye of the Hare" came from Carcanet in June of 2011. Poems of John F. Deane have been translated and published, in book form in a number of countries. His new collection is due in October 2012: "Snow Falling on Chestnut Hill: New & Selected Poems", selected and edited by the teacher, essayist and specialist in Irish poetry Thomas Dillon Redshaw.