The words Long Ago and Far Away have always lured Pat Schaffer into the world of books. Now, as a writer herself, those words are still the ticket into the mystery of the Other which she explores in her stories.

An Irish-American raised in Montreal, she, like many of her characters, has a foot in two worlds and is never quite at home in either. Whether set in a distant land, like her stories about Sri Lanka and Mongolia, or in a distant time, eighteenth-century Ireland or a seventeenth century sugar plantation, her books invite the reader to meet people in an intricately imagined yet real place.

Schaffer has travelled widely, and lived in London and Geneva. For her recent Irish novel, she made many visits to Ireland, studied the Irish language, and researched original materials in the British Library and in Ireland. She is the author of a scholarly website on the Irish Penal Laws.