Dion O'Reilly has lived most of her life on a small farm in the Soquel Valley of California. She has studied with Ellen Bass and Danusha Laméris and received her MFA from Pacific University. For over thirty years, she worked as a school teacher, also leading private groups for her high school students. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, Bellingham Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Catamaran, SWWIM, Grist, and other literary journals and anthologies. She is a member of The Hive Poetry Collective which produces podcasts highlighting poets from the Monterey Bay and around the world. She hosts classes for adults on her farm. Ghost Dogs is her debut full-length collection.