Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow and now lives in Manchester. She has written for both children and adults, and her poetry has received many awards, including the Signal Prize for Children's Verse, the Whitbread and Forward Prizes, as well as the Lannan Award and the EM Forster Prize in America; The World's Wife was shortlisted for both the 1999 Forward Prize and the TS Eliot Prize. Rapture is Duffy's seventh major collection.