Jean Monahan is the author of: Hands, winner of the 1991 Anhinga Prize for Poetry (out of print) ; Believe It or Not, Orchises Press, 1999; and  Mauled Illusionist, also from Orchises. She holds an MFA from Columbia's Creative Writing Division. She currently lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her daughter and is a freelance copywriter.

Monahan has won numerous awards and has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, The American Scholar, Ploughshares, Orion, The New Republic, Shenandoah, Nimrod, and Heliotrope, among other places. She has also been published in several anthologies, including The Poets' Grimm and Orpheus & Company.

About Mauled Illusionist, Molly Peacock said: "...flashes of wisdom and candor pierce the fretwork design of Jean Monahan's spare, beautiful poems."

About Believe It or Not, Vijay Seshadri said: "...these poems are by turns tender and violent, ruefully intelligent and well-informed, and absolutely authentic."