Eugene McNamara was a Canadian writer and professor. He was born in 1930 in Oak Parks, Illinois, and received his PhD from Northwestern University. He moved to Canada in 1959 to begin teaching American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, where his influence lives on in the Eugene McNamara Creative Writing Scholarship. He published many books of poetry and short stories between 1965 and 2015, and became known for the direct and musical phrasing of his poetry, and for his character-driven short stories. McNamara died in 2016.