Mark Payne is the author of several articles on Greek poets from the archaic to the Hellenistic periods. His first book, Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. His second book, The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010. He is a member of the University's Poetry and Poetics program.