J. A. (Jack) McLean (b. Toronto 1945) is an independent scholar, poet, and essayist living in Ottawa, Ontario. He has published five books in the fields of Bahá’í theology, spirituality, and biography. In 2013, his 606-page literary-critical and theological work on the writings of Shoghi Effendi, A Celestial Burning: A Selective Study of the Writings of Shoghi Effendi, won the distinguished scholarship award from the Association for Bahá’í Studies of North America. In 1995, he also won the creative writing award from the same association. He is currently completing a commentary on The Seven Valleys. He has written some thirty academic papers in the fields of Bahá’í theology, mysticism, and philosophical theology. Mr. McLean was fortunate enough to have met and interviewed Laura Dreyfus-Barney in Paris in 1967, when she was eighty-eight years old and he was a young student. See www.jack-mclean.com
