Zoë Brigley was born in 1981 and grew up in Caerphilly in the Rhymney Valley and has family roots in the Llynfi Valley near Bridgend. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003 and received an Academi bursary in 2005. She was amongst the first contingent to study on Warwick University's BA in English and Creative Writing and later she took a MA in Gender and Literature with tutors such as Terry Lovell and Germaine Greer. She has travelled and worked in Central America, particularly Mexico. Her first book of poems, The Secret (Bloodaxe Books, 2007), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008. She now works at Northampton University as a lecturer, but is on leave for a year from 2009, living in Pennsylvania, USA, but still doing occasional readings in the UK.