Randy Brooks

Randy Brooks (born Randy Mark Brooks, June 18, 1954, Hutchinson, Kansas, U.S.A.), American educator, haiku poet, scholar, editor, and publisher. With a Ph.D. in rhetoric and technical writing from Purdue University, Brooks served as professor of English and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Millikin University, Decatur, Ill., teaching courses on professional writing, editing, book publishing, and haiku in English. In 1976 with his wife, Shirley Brooks, he started publishing High/Coo: A Quarterly of Short Verse. The two currently are publishers of Brooks Books and coeditors of Mayfly haiku magazine. In 2021 Brooks Books published clothbound editions of the selected haiku of John Stevenson and of Bill Pauly, both of which were honored in THF Touchstone Book Awards and HSA Merit Book Awards. Randy’s recent books include Walking the Fence: Selected Tanka of Randy Brooks (2019) and The Art of Reading and Writing Haiku: A Reader Response Approach (2019). He serves as the web editor for both Modern Haiku and Frogpond and has resided in Taylorville, Illinois, since 2016.

Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.