Joyelle McSweeney

Joyelle McSweeney received her BA from Harvard, MPhil from Oxford University, and MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. She is the author of ten books of fiction, nonfiction, plays, and translations, as well as several poetry collections, most recently Toxicon and Arachne (Nightboat Books, 2020). Her debut poetry volume, The Red Bird (Fence Books, 2002), inaugurated the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2001.

McSweeney is the winner of the 2022 Shelley Memorial Award and a 2021 Pushcart Prize. She is also the recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the coeditor of Action Books, a professor of English, and director of the creative writing program at the University of Notre Dame.