Ann Sansom has written and directed two plays for Yorkshire Women Theatre and Doncaster Women's Centre, where has worked for many years as librarian and latterly as a writing tutor. She is a freelance writer and has done numerous workshops and residencies with organisations such as the Arvon Foundation and Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Her first book-length collection Romance was published by Bloodaxe in 1994, and she has received an Arts Council Writer's Award. She is married to the poet Peter Sansom, and lives in Sheffield.

About In Praise of Men and other people:

"Ann Sansom's poetry overturns the reader's expectations. Her poems often present human dramas in which people are seen as acting out their versions of themselves in their own fictions. 'Naturally accomplished and instinctively organised poems… there is a maturity to her work, a sureness of hand... a bareknuckle confidence'"
—Simon Armitage

"She knows her territory and speaks from within it with authority...admirably clear and honest."
—Helen Dunmore, Observer

"Sansom's poems often turn round and bite themselves, or their readers...her poems, voiced by women resiliently coping with tough times, are set in curiously deracinated urban landscapes, homing in on chance encounters and missed connections...That balance of brisk authenticity and affectionate generosity suggests that Ann Sansom is mellowing towards a more relaxed but no less arresting poetic maturity: her work will be worth watching out for."
—Neil Powell, Times Literary Supplement