ROBERT M. DOWLING is professor of English at Central Connecticut State University. His acclaimed biography Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts (Yale University Press, 2014) is a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist. His other books include Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem (2007); the two-volume Critical Companion to Eugene O'Neill (2009); the anthology Eugene O'Neill and His Contemporaries: Bohemians, Radicals, Progressives, and the Avant Garde (co-edited with Eileen Herrmann, McFarland, 2011); and a compendium of reviews, Eugene O'Neill: The Contemporary Reviews (co-edited with Jackson R. Bryer, Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Dowling also edited the folio for the online journal Drunken Boat, "Celtic Twilight: 21st-Century Irish Americans on Eugene O'Neill" (2010). He has published articles in The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Drunken Boat, and The Eugene O'Neill Review, among other publications. Dowling serves on the editorial board of The Eugene O'Neill Review and the board of directors of the Eugene O'Neill Society.