McKeon was born in
Longford and attended
Trinity College, Dublin, and
University College, Dublin (UCD). In 2005, she moved to
New York City, where she completed an MFA at
Columbia University. From 2000 to 2010 she worked for
The Irish Times, writing on theatre, literature and the arts. She was the playwright of
Word of Mouth (an RTE radio drama, 2005),
Drapes (Dublin, 2006), and
Graham and Frost (Irish Theatre Festival, New York, 2010). From 2008 to 2011, she also curated the DLR Poetry Now Festival in
Dún Laoghaire,
County Dublin, Ireland, and, with her husband Aengus Woods, she has curated the annual Poetry Fest at the Irish Arts Center, New York, since 2009. McKeon published her first novel,
Solace in 2011. This was followed by her second novel
Tender in 2015. In 2015, McKeon edited
A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance, a collection of new short stories on the theme of distance by 17 international contemporary writers In 2022, McKeon became the head of
Maynooth University's Master of Arts in Creative Writing. Previously, she was Associate Teaching Professor in Creative Writing at
Rutgers University == Critical reception ==