Donald Sheehan

Donald Sheehan received a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He began his long and active teaching career at the University of Chicago in 1967 and concluded it at Dartmouth College, from which he retired in 2004. From 1978 to 2005 he served as Executive Director of The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he created internationally acclaimed poetry writing programs and inspired many contemporary poets.

Received into the Orthodox Church in 1984 following a profound experience of the ancient Orthodox Prayer of the Heart, he was ordained a Subdeacon in the Orthodox Church in America and turned much of his attention to praying, teaching, and writing about Psalms. He and his wife also devoted considerable energy to providing alternative education (schools and homeschooling) for their two sons, David and Benedict. Don reposed in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 26, 2010.

Among his published works, he edited Mountain Intervals: Poems from The Frost Place (The Frost Place, 1987), and co-translated, with Olga Andrejev, Fr. Pavel Florensky's Iconostasis (St. Vladimir's, 1996). The Psalms and the rest of his posthumously published work have been compiled and edited by his wife, Xenia Sheehan: The Psalms of David: Translated from the Septuagint Greek (Wipf & Stock, 2013); The Grace of Incorruption: The Selected Essays of Donald Sheehan on Orthodox Faith and Poetics (Paraclete, 2015); The Shield of Psalmic Prayer: Reflections on Translating, Interpreting, and Praying the Psalter (Ancient Faith, 2020); and In the House of My Pilgrimage: Violence, Noetic Healing, and Personhood (Resource Publications, an imprint of Wipf & Stock, 2023).

For further information and excerpts from the recent book, see the Subdeacon Donald Sheehan public Facebook page.