Joyelle McSweeney

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Joyelle McSweeney (born 1976) is an American poet, playwright, novelist, critic, and professor at the University of Notre Dame. She has published multiple books, including Death Styles (2024) and Toxicon & Arachne (2021) from Nightboat Books, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults (2014) from the University of Michigan Press, Salamandrine: 8 gothics (2013) and Nylund, the Sarcographer (2007) from Tarpaulin Sky Press, and Percussion Grenade (2012), Flet (2007), The Commandrine and Other Poems (2004), and The Red Bird (2001) from Fence Books. She has written two plays, Dead Leaks, or, the Youths (2017) performed by Runaway Labs Theater, and The Contagious Knives, staged at JumpStart Festival for New Writing. Her translations of Yi Sang: Selected Works (2020) were published by Wave Books with Don Mee Choi, Jack Jung, and Sawako Nakayasu. Her reviews appear in The Constant Critic and other outlets, and her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Poetry, Octopus Magazine, GultCult, and Tarpaulin Sky, among others. With her husband Johannes Göransson, she founded Action Books, which has published authors such as Lara Glenum, Tao Lin, Arielle Greenberg, and Hiromi Itō. She studied at Harvard College (BA, magna cum laude), Oxford University (MPhil), and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA). Recent work has appeared in TYPO 31, Image Journal, and Poetry Foundation, including pieces on Kim Hyesoon and John Keats. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022. On November 3, 2025, McSweeney became a Jeopardy! champion, with final earnings of $17,700.