Poet and painter John Brandi is the author of many books, including Pa-Siempre: Cuba Poems (2016), Into the Dream Maze (2015), At It Again (2015), The World, the World (2013), Seeding the Cosmos: New and Selected Haiku (2010), and Facing High Water (2008). As a poet he owes much to the West Coast Beat tradition, as well as to poets as diverse as Federico Garcia Lorca and the Japanese haiku masters. As a painter, his mixed media work, often integrating words and paint, is bright with expressionist colors, while his more subtle haiga paintings draw on Asian influences.

Brandi earned a BA in Art and Anthropology from California State University, Northridge. He has also published travel essays, hand-colored broadsides, and limited-edition letterpress books. He is also the co-editor of The Unswept Path: Contemporary American Haiku (with Dennis Maloney, 2005). Brandi has taught at many different schools, and he lives in New Mexico.