Blackbird ArchiveT.R. Hummer
T.R. Hummer is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including Eon (Louisiana State University Press, 2018) and After the Afterlife (Acre Books, 2017). He is also the author of the essay collections Available Surfaces: Essays on Poesis (University of Michigan Press, 2012) and The Muse in the Machine: Essays on Poetry and the Anatomy of the Body Politic (University of Georgia Press, 2006). Hummer is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at multiple academic institutions, including Arizona State University, the University of Georgia, Kenyon College, Middlebury College, and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Gregory Donovan is the author of the poetry collections Torn from the Sun (Red Hen Press, 2015), long-listed for the Julie Suk Award, and Calling His Children Home (University of Missouri Press, 1993), which won the Devins Award for Poetry. His poetry, essays, translations, and fiction have been published in The Kenyon Review , The Southern Review , New England Review , TriQuarterly , diode , Crazyhorse , Gulf Coast , Copper Nickel , and many other journals. His work has also appeared in several anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia (University of Virginia Press, 2003). Among other awards for his writing, he is the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Award from New England Writers as well as grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Donovan has served as a visiting writer and guest faculty for a number of summer conferences and low-residency programs, such as the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Chautauqua Institution Writers’ Center, the River Pretty Writers Retreat, the VCFA Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, and the University of Tampa MFA program. With the writer/director Michele Poulos, he is a producer of A Late Style of Fire , the feature-length documentary on the life and work of the late Larry Levis. Donovan is a founding faculty member of Virginia Commonwealth University’s graduate creative writing program. He is a senior editor at Blackbird . Photo by Michele Poulos
T.R. Hummer is the author of fifteen books of poetry and essays, most recently In These States (Jacar Press, 2020) and Eon (Louisiana State University Press, 2018). His most recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker , New York Quarterly , and Rattle . A former professor, he served as editor-in-chief for the Kenyon Review , The New England Review , and The Georgia Review . He has received numerous awards and honors, including a National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Grant in poetry, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the Donald Justice Award for Poetry. Formerly a professor and editor, he now lives in Cold Spring, New York. Photo by David Limburg
Michele Poulos is a second-year MFA student in creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. She completed her BFA at New York University in Tisch School of the Arts. Her poems have been published in storySouth . She is a two time nominee for the anthology Best New American Voices (Harcourt, 2008 and 2009). Also, Poulos was recently nominated for the AWP Intro Journal Award 2007, and was awarded VCU’s David Baldacci Fiction Fellowship for 2006-2007.