Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was born in Cork City in 1942. She was a founder member of Cyphers, a literary journal. Her first collection, Acts and Monuments, won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. Other awards include the Irish Times Award for Poetry, the O’Shaughnessy Award of the Irish-American Cultural Institute and the International Griffin Poetry Prize.
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is a Fellow and Professor of English (Emerita) at Trinity College, Dublin and a member of Aosdána (the Irish Association to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland). She is married to Macdara Woods and they have a son, Niall.