Dennis James Sweeney is the author, most recently, of a guide for writers, How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses. Their first book, In the Antarctic Circle, won the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize and was a Debut Poetry Book of 2021 in Poets & Writers. You’re the Woods Too, their second book, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller and a finalist for the Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Prize. A novella, The Rolodex Happenings, won the Stillhouse Press Novella Prize.

Their fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Ecotone, Ninth Letter, The New York Times, The Southern Review, and Witness, among others. Articles on writing and publishing have appeared in Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Shit No One Tells You About Writing.

Sweeney has an MFA from Oregon State University and a PhD from the University of Denver. They are the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship to Malta, as well as residencies from Brush Creek, the I-Park Foundation, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Originally from Cincinnati, they live in Amherst, Massachusetts, where they teach at Amherst College.