Michael Dennis Browne Biography
Michael Dennis Browne is Distinguished Teaching Professor of English and former director of the program in creative writing at the University of Minnesota, where he has taught since 1971.
His fifth collection of poetry, Selected Poems 1965-1995, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, won the Minnesota Book Award for poetry in 1998. His previous book, You Won't Remember This, won a Minnesota Book Award in 1993.
As a librettist, he has written many texts for music, working principally with composers Stephen Paulus and John Foley S.J. The Three Hermits, a church opera by Paulus and Browne, was performed in the Great Hall at St. John's in April 2007. His latest collaboration with Stephen Paulus, the post-Holocaust oratorioo To be Certain of the Dawn, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in music by the Minnesota Orchestra in 2006 and was performed again and recorded by them in 2008. It also was performed at St. Cloud State and in the Abbey Church at St. John's in April 2008.
Browne's poems have been published in many magazines and anthologies, and his awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bush Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation.
Give Her the River, a picture book with paintings by Wendell Minor, was published in 2004 by Atheneum Books for Young Readers. Things I Can't Tell You, a new collection of poetry, was published in 2005 and My James Wright and Other Essays was published in 2008, both by Carnegie Mellon University Press.
His latest publication, released in 2009, is What the Poem Wants (Carnegie Mellon University Press).
Browne is married to Lisa McLean and they have three children: Peter, Mary and Nellie.