James J. McAuley (1936-2021) was born in Dublin, where he worked as an ESB clerk, then as a journalist. He was a freelance arts reviewer for Hibernia, The Kilkenny Magazine, The Belfast Newsletter and Radio Éireann. He lectured on art occasionally at the Hugh Lane Gallery, and in Adult Education at Queen's University Belfast. After emigrating to the United States in 1966, he received an MFA degree from the University of Arkansas in 1971, and from 1968 until his retirement in 1998 taught poetry and poetics, literature and Irish Studies courses at Lycoming College and Eastern Washington University, where he was also the founding Director of their Creative Writing Programs and Director of EWU Press. From 1979 until 1999, he directed the EWU Summer Writing Workshops at Newman House and the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin. He is represented in a number of anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Irish Verse and The Great Book of Ireland. New & Selected Poems is his tenth collection of poems.