Rita Ann Higgins

Rita Ann Higgins (born 1955) is an Irish poet and playwright.

Early life A native of Ballybrit, Galway, Higgins was one of eleven children in a working-class household. She went to Briarhill National School, and Sisters of Mercy Convent, Galway. She married in 1973 but following the birth of her second child in 1977, contracted tuberculosis, forcing her to spend an extended period in a sanatorium.

While confined, she began reading, and took to composing poems. She joined the Galway Writers' Workshop in 1982. Jessie Lendennie, editor of Salmon Publishing, encouraged Higgins and oversaw the publication of her first five collections.

Personal life Higgins is a member of Aosdána, though the group turned her down five times previously. She cites the feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the Irish Republican, Mary MacSwiney, as role models. She lives in Galway and An Spidéal. Pathogens Love a Patsy - Pandemic and Other Poems, Salmon Poetry, 2020

Plays Face Licker Come Home, 1991 God of the Hatch Man, 1992 Colie Lally Doesn't Live in a Bucket, 1993 Down All the Roundabouts, 1999 The Empty Frame, 2008 The Plastic Bag, 2008 The Empty Frame, 2008 The Colossal Longing of Julie Connors, 2014

Screenplay The Big Break, 2004 Straois/The Smirk, 2018