Donovan McAbee is a poet, essayist, and scholar who grew up in the foothills of South Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. He holds a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in Contemporary Poetry from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and is Professor of Religion and the Arts at Belmont University in Nashville. His debut poetry collection, Holy the Body (Texas Review Press, 2026), explores faith, grief, and the sacred through dark humor and lyrical precision. His earlier chapbook, Sightings, appeared in the Floodgate Poetry Series. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Hudson Review, The Sun, and The Christian Century, and he received a Tennessee Williams Scholarship at the Sewanee Writers' Conference.