Mike McMahon was born (1939) and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After receiving a B.A. in English from the University of Notre Dame (1961), he taught high-school English in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, then earned a Ph.D. in educational philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh.
His first academic appointment was at the University of Virginia, where one of his students submitted a poem in lieu of a required paper. That poem, “The Red Fox,” sparked a born-again conversion to the writing life. McMahon resigned from his tenured position and embarked upon an odyssey of blue collar jobs at horse farms, tobacco factories, apartment buildings and at the wheel of a D. C. Metro bus, which he drove four fond years.
In 1985 he and his wife moved to Fresno. McMahon returned to teaching as an ESL instructor. His students were Hispanic farm workers who met for evening classes in churches and private dwellings of Selma and Parlier. Drawn to the poets at CSU Fresno, he completed an M. A. in Creative Writing in 1992. Since then he has taught at CSU Fresno, Fresno City College and, most devotedly, at Fresno Pacific University.
McMahon’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, such as Atlanta Review, Bitter Oleander, Green Mountains Review, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Seneca Review and Spoon River Poetry Review. His poems have also been published in several anthologies, including Tebot Bach’s Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets (2006). Finally, his translation of Jesús Serra’s book of poems, Páramos en la Memoria, has been reissued by the University of the Andes Press.
McMahon’s wife, Jody, teaches at CSU Fresno; his daughter, Catherine, lives on a farm by the Blue Ridge Mountains, and his poetry collection, Night Places, wanders from door to door in search of a gracious publishing house with long-term care.
