William Wall was born in Cork in 1955. As "Bill Wall," he is the author of a children's trilogy, The Powder Monkey-—A 1798 Story (1996), The Slave Coast (1997) and The Cove of Cork (1998). His novels for adult readers include Alice Falling (2000), Minding Children (2001) and The Map of Tenderness (2002). His first collection of poems, Mathematics & Other Poems, appeared from the Collins Press in 1997 and his first collection with Dedalus, Fahrenheit Says Nothing to Me, appeared in 2004.

"An idiom and tone... finely tuned to the disparities between physical and metaphysical worlds... An accomplished collection, marked by its intellectual and emotional range, and a corresponding control of form and language"—Poetry Ireland Review onMathematics & Other Poems