Maureen N. McLane grew up in upstate New York and was educated at Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Chicago. She is the author of two books of poems, World Enough (2010) and Same Life (2008), and a poetry chapbook, This Carrying Life (2005). She has also published two books of literary criticism: Balladeering, Minstrelsy, and the Making of British Romantic Poetry (2008) and Romanticism and the Human Sciences (2000, 2006); she co-edited The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry (2008). A contributing editor at Boston Review, she was for years the chief poetry critic of the Chicago Tribune; her articles on poetry, contemporary fiction, and sexuality have appeared widely, including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Review, the Washington Post, American Poet, and on the Poetry Foundation website.

In 2003 McLane won the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing; she was elected in 2007 for a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the NBCC. Currently an associate professor of English at NYU, McLane has taught at Harvard, the University of Chicago, MIT, and the East Harlem Poetry Project.