Jeffrey Bean was raised in Bloomington, Indiana.  He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Guitar Performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from the University of Alabama. From 2006-2008, he served as the Axton Fellow in Poetry at the University of Louisville. Currently, he lives with his wife Jessica and daughter Olivia in Mount Pleasant, MI, where he is Professor of English/Creative Writing at Central Michigan University and a two-time winner of the CMU Excellence in Teaching award.  His first full length collection, Diminished Fifth, was published by David Robert Books in 2009. His chapbook Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window won the 2013 Vern Cowles/Copperdome Poetry Chapbook Prize and was published by Southeast Missouri State University Press, and his chapbook The Voyeur's Litany won the Anabiosis Press Chapbook Contest and was published in 2016.  His second full-length collection, Woman Putting on Pearls, won the 2016 Red Mountain Poetry Prize and was published by Red Mountain Press. Naomi Shihab Nye selected his

chapbook manuscript Ella's Plan as the winner of the 2022 Poets Corner Chapbook Prize and the book

was published by Maine Media Workshops. His poems have been featured on Poets.org, on the NPR program The Writer’s Almanac, in the New Poetry from the Midwest anthologies, and in the anthology Good Poems, American Places.  His poems have appeared in the journals The Southern Review, Slate.com, The Antioch Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, Colorado Review, Subtropics, South Carolina Review, and River Styx, among others.