Clare Boylan is from Dublin and now lives in Wicklow. A former editor of Image magazine, she has published six novels, including Holy Pictures (1983) and Room for a Single Lady (1997), which is being made into a film. Her celebrated and widely translated stories have appeared as far afield as Russia and Japan. Her short story collections are A Nail in the Head (1983), Concerning Virgins (1989), and That Bad Woman (1995). Her Collected Stories have just been published by Abacas (£7.99 in UK). She is also the editor of The Agony and the Ego, essays on the art and strategy of fiction writing, and The Literary Companion to Cats.