Rob McLennan was born on March 15, 1970, in Ottawa, Ontario.

He is a Canadian writer, poet, critic, editor, and publisher. He is the author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, published in Canada, the United States, Europe, India, Japan, and Australia.. He won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include “A halt, which is empty” (2019), “Life sentence” (2019), and “the book of smaller” (2022). As a publisher, McLennan runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, and Touch the Donkey. He is the editor of my (small press) writing day and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-2008 academic year in Edmonton as a writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. McLennan regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.

He lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with poet and book conservator Christine McNair and their two daughters.

Hugh McLennan (no relation to Hugh MacLennan the Canadian novelist) was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, third child of five and only son of wealthy industrialist John Stewart McLennan. With the exception of a few years in Boston starting in 1894, the family lived in Cape Breton and on their Montreal estate, “Petersfield,” built in Westmount in 1902. Summers were always spent in Louisbourg, Cape Breton, where his father was passionately interested in the history of the fort there. Hugh went to McGill University from 1905 to 1907 for a degree in architecture, probably staying downtown with his father’s sister, Isabella, “Aunt Belle” in his grandfather’s home at 50 Ontario Street; she donated over a million dollars to McGill, enough for construction of the library that bears her name. In 1912 his mother died of appendicitis. In January of 1915, his father remarried with Grace Seely Henon, widow of an Egyptologist.
Hugh eventually headed to Paris to study at the École des Beaux Arts before enlisting in the Canadian Army. He became a sergeant in the Fifth Battery, Second Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery. While in France, he wrote a diary and many letters home which are now in the library at the University of British Columbia, along with a letter from his cousin Durie describing his last days. In May of that year Hugh, was killed by enemy shell fire while taking part in operations near St. Jean northeast of Ypres in Belgium. In 1918, his uncle Bart (Lt. Col. Bartlett McLennan, brother of his father), who had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his services during the Battle of Ypres, was killed near Amiens in France during a personal reconnaissance mission over land that was to be attacked in a few days. Years later, in 1929, Hugh’s family established the Hugh McLennan Memorial Travelling Scholarship to be granted to an outstanding graduating architecture student at McGill.

A lawyer, Francis McLennan was one of the founders of the McLennan Travelling Libraries. He was a Governor's Fellow from 1905 to 1918 and a Governor of McGill University from 1917 to 1931.