Breda Wall Ryan grew up on a farm in Co. Waterford and now lives in Co. Wicklow. She has a B.A. in English and Spanish from UCC; a Post-graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Second or Other Language from Trinity College, London; an M.Phil. in Creative Writing (Distinction) from Trinity College, Dublin, and is an alumnus of Faber Academy. She has been the recipient of a Wicklow Arts Individual Artist Bursary Award.
Her awarded fiction has been broadcast on RTÉ and has appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories 2006-7 and The New Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction. Her stories have been broadcast on RTÉ and published in journals and anthologies, including Sunday Tribune/New Irish Writing, The Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories and The New Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction; and have been shortlisted for a William Trevor/ Elizabeth Bowen Short Story Award, UCD Anthology Contest (Fiction) Prize; Francis MacManus Short Story Award, The Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award and Hennessy Literary Award for Fiction.
Her poems have been widely published in print and online journals, including Skylight 47, Ink Sweat and Tears, Deep Water Literary Journal, And Other Poems, Fish Anthology, The Ofi Press, Orbis, Magma and The Rialto.
Between 2009 and 2013, Breda was shortlisted or placed in numerous contests, including Mslexia Poetry Prize, Fish Poetry Prize, Cara/Bailieborough Poetry Competition, Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition, Fermoy International Poetry Competition and the Patrick Kavanagh Award.
In 2013, she won the iYeats Poetry Contest, Poets Meet Painters, Dromineer Poetry Competition and Over the Edge New Writer of the Year.
She was selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2014 and was awarded Second Place in the Patrick Kavanagh Award, Third Prize in The Rialto/RSPB Nature Poetry Competition, was shortlisted for a Bridport Prize and Highly Commended in Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition.
A Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee, she won the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition, 2015 for ‘Self Portrait in the Convex Bulge of a Hare’s Eye’, which is the title poem of her first collection, In a Hare’s Eye (Doire Press, 2015).