Jay Hickey was born in a flat in Ballymun, Dublin on April 16th, 1971. At two years old the family moved to the leafy suburb of Ballinteer at the foot of the Dublin Mountains. Raised in a family with siblings Amanda, David, Wendy, Gordon & Anthony, Jay left school at 14 and started working for £30 per week as a helper to a bread delivery man. Writing his first poem in his early twenties, he worked various different jobs through the years, writing poetry as a hobby, and as a form of self therapy for helping him understand all the mixed up emotions that come with this gift of life! All the while writing for himself, in the back of his mind he had an ambition to get his words published in print.