ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rosie Nee was born in Birmingham and returned with her family to Renvyle in Connemara in 1964. An old way of life was passing among the people, where the seen world existed side by side with the unseen. Self-sufficiency was the norm and old people still identified the route taken into the Renvyle peninsula by Cromwell's soldiers. She was educated in Tully National School and Kylemore Abbey School. She furthered her education at the National University of Ireland, Galway from 1975 to 1979, where she obtained a BA in History and English and a Higher Diploma in Education. In 1989 she obtained an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College, Dublin and a Diploma in Primary Education from Hibernia College in 2006. She has worked as both a primary and secondary school teacher and as a library assistant, as well as an English teacher in north Africa and Dublin, with intermittent periods of being a homemaker. In 1993 she moved from Dublin to County Roscommon with her late husband Mícheál Ó Ceallaigh, where she lives near Elphin and is now retired. She has a grown-up family, Anastasia and Dima, Anastasia's partner Jason and grandson Ruairí. The Friendship of Scholars is her first book.