Kate O’Neill has served as an educator for more than three decades, including as Chancellor of the University of New Mexico-Taos and as the New Mexico Secretary of Higher Education. She holds graduate degrees in education from Harvard University and completed an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Loch Raven Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Skylight 47, and in numerous anthologies. Her chapbook, Emulsifying Fires: Ansel Adams in New Mexico (2022), was handprinted as a limited edition on a 1909 cast iron Chandler and Price letterpress and is now out of print.

Kate’s first encounter with Ireland ignited a sense of passion for peat smoke, Irish lilts, and mossy gnarled oaks. The visage of the land, its ghosts and grace, have kept her coming back for the better part of 50 years.

Her returns make for transformative pilgrimages—infused with the powerful pull of her ancestors and imbued with a love of music, poetry, history, resistance, grit, humor, beauty, resilience, grace and imminence. Ireland’s indigenous pagan ways, stories and myths feel close at hand. Each journey to Ireland envelopes her with a deeper sense of belonging, especially in the areas of her ancestors.

Kate holds dual United States-Irish citizenship and splits her time between Galway and Northern New Mexico where she lives with her family and beloved hounds.