Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. Her first collection of poems, "Interior With Sudden Joy," was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in June 1999, and was a finalist for the PEN Joyce Osterweil Award, the Norma Faber First Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award.

Brenda Shaughnessy's poems have appeared in publications such as the Paris Review, Yale Review and the Boston Review. Her essays and profiles have appeared in the Village Voice, Publisher's Weekly and American Poet. A graduate of Columbia University's writing program, she currently lives in New York City.

"[Interior With Sudden Joy is] a heady, infectious celebration of the range and peculiarity of erotic life." --The New Yorker

Listen here to a special MP3Lit.com recording of Brenda Shaughnessy reading her poems "Dear Gonglya" and "Your One Good Dress."