B. 1971

Brent Goodman was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and earned an MFA in creative writing from Purdue University. He is the author of the chapbooks Trees Are the Slowest Rivers (1998) and Wrong Horoscope, winner of the 1999 Frank O’Hara Award. His full-length poetry collections include The Brother Swimming Beneath Me (2009), which was nominated for both a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry and the Thom Gunn Award, and Far From Sudden (2013).
 
In The Brother Swimming Beneath Me, Goodman explores the tragic death of his brother and his accompanying grief through lyric meditations on personal spirituality and consciousness itself. Coldfront Magazine reviewer Rick Marlatt commented that Goodman “beckons readers into his balance of desperation and tranquility” through the book’s narrative flashbacks and “poignant and evocative images.”
 
Goodman has twice received Wisconsin Arts Board Individual Artist Fellowship Awards. He lives in Wisconsin.