Peggy was educated at Mount Holyoke (B.A.), University College, Dublin (M.A.) and Trinity College, Dublin (Ph.D.). She taught in Ireland, at Trinity College in the English Department, for the first half of her career. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Sudden Thaw and Frog Spotting. She publishes individual poems regularly on both side of the ocean. Her work has appeared in magazines such as The Yale Review and The New Yorker. She is also the author of a critical book, Writing Lough Derg: from William Carleton to Seamus Heaney. This volume is a comprehensive study of modern and contemporary Irish literature, prominently poetry, about a medieval site of pilgrimage in Ireland. She is also the editor of the Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry.