Ita Daly was born in Leitrim and studied English and Spanish at University College Dublin. Beside her award-winning short stories, collected in The Lady with the Red Shoes (1980), she has written five novels – Unholy Ghosts (1997), All Fall Down (1992), Dangerous Fictions (1991), A Singular Attraction (1987) and Ellen (1986) – and two books for children, Candy on the Dart (1989) and Candy and Sharon Olé (1991). Oxford University Press have published her beautifully presented Irish Myths and Legends, and she is working on another novel. Ita Daly lives in Dublin.