High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Joseph Payne Brennan (December 20, 1918 – January 28, 1990) was a prolific American writer of fantasy and horror fiction, and also a distinguished poet. Of Irish ancestry, he was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and he lived most of his life in New Haven, Connecticut, and worked at the Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University for over 40 years. Brennan published several hundred short stories (estimates range between four to five hundred), two novellas and reputedly thousands of poems. His stories appeared in over 200 anthologies and have been translated into German, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish.