Andrew McNeillie was born in North Wales. He was Literature Editor at OUP for five years until May 2009 when Exeter University made him a Professor in their English Department, based at the university's campus in Cornwall. This appointment centers round the magazine Archipelago, founded in 2007. His first collection of poems Nevermore (2000), in the Oxford Poets series from Carcanet, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His memoir An Aran Keening tells of his stay on Inis Mór, just short of a year through 1968-69. It was published in 2001 by the Lilliput Press and in 2002 in the USA by the University of Wisconsin Press. A celebratory anthology, Archipelago: A Reader (2021), was published by the Lilliput Press.