Jeffrey McDaniel

Jeffrey McDaniel (born 1967) is an American poet. He has published five books of poetry, most recently Chapel of Inadvertent Joy (University of Pittsburgh Press). He is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has been included in Ploughshares,The Best American Poetry 1994, The Best American Poetry 2010, and The New Young American Poets, as well as on the National Endowment for the Arts website. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

McDaniel received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1990, where he studied with Thomas Lux, Brooks Haxton, Kate Knapp-Johnson, Cornelius Eady, and Safiya Henderson-Holmes. In his senior year of college, McDaniel was in a weekly reading group with authors Joel Brouwer, Tessa Rumsey, and Marisa de los Santos among others. A chapbook, The Boy Inside The Turtle, was published in 1989 by fellow student Gerry LaFemina.

McDaniel received an MFA from George Mason University in 1993, where he studied with C.K. Williams, Susan Tichy, and Carolyn Forche. In grad school, he was the poetry editor for the school's national literary magazine, Phoebe, 1991–92, and the editor, 1992-93. He was also active in a student performance troupe, Poetry Theater, (founded by Chris Carpenter), where grad students presented their poems in a theatrical context. In grad school, McDaniel first began publishing poems in magazines, including Ploughshares, Fine Madness, Exquisite Corpse, and Willow Springs. In his final year of grad school, he also got involved with the nascent poetry slam movement at the 15 Minutes Club in Washington DC. He was on a team (with Silvana Straw among others) to represent DC at the 1993 National Poetry Slam in San Francisco. He also represented Washington DC at the 1994 and '95 National Poetry Slams and Venice Beach (California) in the 1998 National Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas. McDaniel has not performed in a poetry slam since the late 1990s.