Patricia Monaghan was Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at De Paul University, Chicago. Her several Irish related works include, Irish Spirit: Pagan, Celtic, Christian, Global, an international collection of essays which she compiled and edited for Wolfhound Press in 2001. Her poetry collection Dancing with Chaos (SalmonPoetry, 2002) notably delights in the entanglements of the human and personal in poetry and science. Patricia was honored with a Pushcart Prize, the Paul Gruchow Nature Writing award, and the Friends of Literature award for poetry. She and her husband, Michael McDermott, founded The Black Earth Institute, a writers & artists think-tank whose current Fellows come from all over North America and Ireland, and she was vice-President of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology as well as a lecturer for the Women's theological Institute. Patricia died on 11 November 2012.
