Mary Biddinger
# Mary Biddinger

Mary Biddinger (born May 14, 1974, in Fremont, California) is an American poet, editor, and academic.

## Biography

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.

Biddinger is the author of the poetry collections Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007), Saint Monica (Black Lawrence Press, 2011), O Holy Insurgency (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), and A Sunny Place with Adequate Water (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). 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 to 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 The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics, was published in January, 2011.

In 2007, Biddinger founded Barn Owl Review, an independent literary magazine published in Akron, Ohio.

## Awards

* National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry (2014)
* Two Ohio Arts Council Individual Creativity Excellence Awards
* Illinois Arts Council Literary Award (2005)
* Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences Service Award (2008)

## Works

* Prairie Fever, 2007, Steel Toe Books
* Saint Monica, 2011, Black Lawrence Press
* O Holy Insurgency, 2013, Black Lawrence Press
* A Sunny Place with Adequate Water, 2014, Black Lawrence Press
* Small Enterprise, 2015, Black Lawrence Press
* The Czar (with Jay Robinson), 2016, Black Lawrence Press
* Partial Genius, 2019, Black Lawrence Press
* Department of Elegy, 2022, Black Lawrence Press
