Mary Biddinger


Mary Biddinger is an American poet, editor, and academic.
Mary Biddinger is the author of the poetry collections Prairie Fever, Saint Monica, O Holy Insurgency, and A Sunny Place with Adequate Water. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Guernica, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, 32 poems, Ninth Letter, North American Review, Ploughshares, and Third Coast. Biddinger is the recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry.
She is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Akron, and was Director of the NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program from 2009-2012. Biddinger teaches courses in poetry writing, craft and theory of poetry, and literature.
Biddinger is the Editor of the Akron Series in Poetry, which sponsors the annual Akron Poetry Prize and publishes three poetry collections every year. Biddinger also serves as co-editor, with John Gallaher, of the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics at the University of Akron Press. The first volume, titled , was published in January, 2011.
In 2007, Biddinger founded Barn Owl Review, an independent literary magazine published in Akron, Ohio.

Education

Mary Biddinger received an Honors B.A. in English with a Creative Writing Subconcentration from the University of Michigan. She also holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University, and a Ph.D. in English with Creative Dissertation from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Awards

National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry

Two Ohio Arts Council Individual Creativity Excellence Awards

Illinois Arts Council Literary Award

Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences Service Award

Works