Dawn Wood was born in 1963 in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. She trained as a microbiologist at Queen’s University, Belfast then moved to Dundee in 1986. She has worked as a science lecturer and is a painter. She completed her doctorate in 2008 on the husbandry of nature, as poetry and as science. Quarry, her first collection, was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.