The Orchid Keeper

Paul Perry was born in Dublin in 1972. He has won the Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year Award and The Listowel Prize for Poetry and has been a James Michener Fellow of Creative Writing at The University of Miami, and a Cambor Fellow of Poetry at The University of Houston. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, TLS, Granta and The Best American Poetry 2000. He has been a Writer in Residence for Co. Longford, the University of Ulster, and Rathlin Island. His first book The Drowning of the Saints was published in 2003 to critical acclaim. This was followed in 2006 by The Orchid Keeper and in 2009 by The Last Falcon and Small Ordinance. His translations include 108 Moons; The Selected Poems of Jurga Ivanauskaite. He has taught creative writing at Kingston University, London, and University College Dublin and was curator of the largest and longest running international poetry festival in Ireland, dlr Poety Now. Together with writer Karen Gillece he is the author (under the penname Karen Perry) of two popular and much-praised thrillers. REVIEW EXCERPT “His is an imagination without borders, a probing and unsettling intelligence lightly worn.” — Dermot Bolger