Joyelle McSweeney is a poet, prose writer, playwright, critic and publisher. Author of six books of poetry and prose (Salamandrine, 8 Gothics, Percussion Grenade, Flet, Nylund, The Sarcographer, Commandrine, and The Red Bird), she is also the co-founder and co-editor, with Johannes Göranson, of Action Books, an international press for poetry and translation. She is, in addition, the author of a critical book, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults, and of a play, Dead Youth, or, The Leaks, winner of the inaugural Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Playwrights. McSweeney is currently director of MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame; she has previously taught in the MFA Program at the University of Alabama and was a Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writers Workshop.