Alison Dye was born and brought up in New York State and was a social worker in New York for several years before moving with her small daughter to Ireland in 1987. In 1989 her story ‘On the Development of a Free Spirit’, won the Stand International Short Story Competition and in 1994 she had her first novel published, The Sense of Things, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. She has since written two more novels, Memories of Snow and An Awareness of March. She continues to be involved with social work, teaching in the Social Sciences Department of Trinity College, Dublin.