Jeffrey McDaniel

Jeffrey McDaniel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1967. He received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from George Mason University.

McDaniel is the author of seven poetry collections, including Thin Ice Olympics (Write Bloody, 2022); Holiday in the Islands of Grief: Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020); Chapel of Inadvertent Joy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013); The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008); and Alibi School (Manic D Press, 1995), which the poet Bill Knott called “fresh, provocative, nondoctrinaire.”

According to the poet Khaled Mattawa, McDaniel’s work “chronicles the emotions that jolt us as we stare into the abyss and pulls us away when we’ve seen enough.”

The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, McDaniel’s poems have appeared in two volumes of Best American Poetry. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in the Hudson Valley in New York.