Rand Brandes is the Martin Luther Stevens Professor of English at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina where he teaches Modern British and Irish Literature and Creative Writing. He received his M.A. and Ph. D. from Emory University. Brandes is the recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships in Ireland; in 1993-4 he worked with Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney organizing, documenting, and ... Read morepreserving his manuscripts and correspondence. Along with Michael K. Durkan, he published Seamus Heaney: A Reference Guide (G.K. Hall, 1996). Brandes has published widely on Modern British and Irish writers-including D.H. Lawrence, Ted Hughes, and John Montague. In 1999 his essay: "'Letter by Strange Letter': Yeats, Heaney and the Aura of the Book," was awarded the Roger McHugh Prize for the outstanding learned essay in the past year's volume of the journal New Hibernia Review. His collection of poems, Balefires, was published by Published in Heaven Chapbook Series #77, Louisville, Kentucky. He has also lectured at the WB Yeats Summer School, Queens University Belfast, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He lives in Hickory, North Carolina with his wife Beth and son, Blake. Michael J. Durkan (d. 1996) was the Head Librarian at Swarthmore College and co-author of Sean O'Casey: A Bibliography. Show Less