Sean McDowell

Sean McDowell did his graduate work in Renaissance literature and culture at Indiana University, thereby combining his lifelong interests in poetry, art, and history. A Professor of English at Seattle University, he is the author most recently of Learning to Jump, a full-length collection of poems, and of Metaphysical Shadows: The Persistence of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Marvell in Contemporary Poetry, a book of literary criticism. He also edits the John Donne Journal: Studies in the Age of Donne and has served as a past president of the Andrew Marvell Society and currently serves as president of the John Donne Society.

Sean grew up in the Chicagoland area and around the Great Lakes. Since 2002, he has lived and worked in the Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest with his wife and their three children. He loves cooking, carpentry, watercolor painting, and generally working with his hands, and relishes long walks in the woods and quiet sojourns by the sea. Every summer he travels to Ireland, a place that always feels like home.