Ruth Carr was born in Belfast, educated at Queen’s University, Stranmillis College and the University of Ulster, and has been a tutor in adult education since the early 1980s. She worked in community education at BIFHE (The Belfast Met) for over 15 years, mainly in adult literacy, inclusive learning and creative writing. Since then she has been freelance, offering workshops throughout Northern Ireland but more recently focusing on creative writing and poetry for the Crescent Arts Centre, Open Arts and Engage With Age. She has edited various anthologies, both for writing groups and publishers, for instance The Female Line in 1985 (under the name Hooley) for the Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Movement (reprinted as an ebook in 2016). She was a co-editor of The Honest Ulsterman (HU poetry magazine) for about 15 years and produced its final hard copy issue in 2003. She was a founder member of the Word of Mouth women’s poetry collective whose Word of Mouth anthology (Blackstaff, 1998) has been translated into Russian. She has three collections of poetry, There is a House and The Airing Cupboard (Summer Place Press) and just out in December 2017, Feather and Bone (Arlen House).
