The House Beyond the Hill

Michael Robert Collings (born 1947) is an author, poet, literary critic, and bibliographer, and a former professor of creative writing and literature at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He was Poet in Residence at Pepperdine's Seaver College from 1997–2000. After graduating with a Master's degree in English from the University of California, Riverside in 1973, Collings received his Ph.D. in English literature from UCR in 1977, specializing in Milton and The Renaissance.

Michael R. Collings has had multiple collections of his poetry published on subjects such as Mormon theology, Joseph Smith, Christmas, science fiction, and horror. He is known for his literary critiques and bibliographies of the works of Orson Scott Card and Stephen King, though he has also published critiques and bibliographies of the works of Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, C. S. Lewis, Brian W. Aldiss, and Piers Anthony. His In the Image of God: Theme, Characterization and Landscape in the Fiction of Orson Scott Card was the first book-length academic look at Card's works.