Matthew Brennan was born in St. Louis and educated at St. Louis University High. He earned a B.A. from Grinnell College and Master's and Doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of THE HOUSE WITH THE MANSARD ROOF (The Backwaters Press, 2009) and two previous collections of poems, Seeing in the Dark (Hawkhead Press,,1993) and The Music of Exile (Cloverdale Books, 1994), as well as the verse-narrative The Sea-Crossing of Saint Brendan (Birch Brook Press, 2008). His poems have appeared widely in such publications as Poetry Ireland Review, Notre Dame Review, South Dakota Review, Poet Lore, Sewanee Review, and Blue Unicorn. He has also written two critical studie--Wordsworth, Turner, and Romantic Landscape (Camden House,1987) and The Gothic Psyche (Camden House, 1997--and has contributed articles and reviews to South Carolina Review, South Atlantic Quarterly, Sewanee Review, Georgia Review, The Wordsworth Circle, English Language Notes, and other journals. In 1999 he won the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred. He lives in Terre Haute with his wife, Beverley Simms, and teaches at Indiana State University.