Frieda Hughes was born in London in 1960, grew up in Devon, and after living in various parts of England and Australia now lives on the Welsh Borders. She wrote and painted from an early age, and for many years has been a painter and children's writer. She received a NESTA Award in 2002 to help her work on Forty-five, her portrait of her life in 45 poems and paintings, the poems from which were published by HarperCollins in the US in 2006. Her most recent work is included is Alternative Values: poems & paintings, launched by Bloodaxe in 2015 at an exhibition of the paintings at London's Belgravia Gallery. Out of the Ashes (2018) draws on her four previous poetry collections from Bloodaxe: Wooroloo (1999), Stonepicker (2001), Waxworks (2002) and The Book of Mirrors (2009). Her first children's book, Getting Rid of Edna, was published by Heinemann (UK) and Harper & Row (USA) in 1984. Four other titles followed from Simon and Schuster: The Meal a Mile Long (1989) and Waldorf and the Sleeping Granny (1990), which she also illustrated; followed byThe Thing in the Sink (1992) and Rent-a-Friend (1994). Her most recent titles are The Tall Story (MacDonald Young Books, 1997) and Three Scary Stories (HarperCollins, 2001).

This selection from Frieda Hughes's first four poetry collections is prefaced by a short memoir about her life and work, including the loss of her parents, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and brother Nicholas. The book excludes poems from Forty-five (HarperCollins, US, 2006), and Alternative Values: poems & paintings (Bloodaxe Books, 2015).