Faculty
Mary Biddinger
Mary Biddinger’s newest poetry collection, Department of Elegy, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in early 2022. She is editor of the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron Press, and recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Cleveland Arts Prize.
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Biddinger is the author of six previous poetry collections and a chapbook, and co-editor of The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics. She serves as professor and assistant chair of English at the University of Akron, and teaches in the NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program.
Paula J. Lambert
Paula J. Lambert is a literary and visual artist from Columbus, Ohio. Her full-length poetry collections include The Ghost of Every Feathered Thing (FutureCycle 2022); How to See the World (Bottom Dog 2020), a finalist in the 2021 Ohioana Book Awards; and The Sudden Seduction of Gravity (Full/Crescent 2012). She has also authored several chapbooks.
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The focus of much of her work has been the anatomy of birds: by digging deep into their bones, beaks, and feathers, she has found her way to issues both deeply personal and broadly political.
Awarded the 2021 PEN America - L'Engle Rahman Prize for Mentorship, Lambert's work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council. She has twice been in residence at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
Lambert owns Full/Crescent Press, a small publisher of poetry books and broadsides, through which she has founded and supported numerous public readings and festivals that support the intersection of poetry and science.
Lauren MalletT
Lauren Mallett (she/her/hers) is a poet, teacher, birth doula, and fiber artist. She has lived and studied in Guanajuato and Xalapa, Mexico. Lauren taught dual-language immersion fifth grade in Richmond, California. She earned her MFA and was the Assistant Director of Creative Writing at Purdue University.
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Her poetry appears in Poetry Northwest, The Seventh Wave, Salamander, Passages North, Scud, and other journals. Lauren lives with her partner, Strand Sheldahl-Thomason, on Clatsop land of Oregon's north coast.
She serves on the Board of Directors for the Oregon Poetry Association. Lauren is the Student Contest Chair of Cascadia, an online anthology and contest for Oregon's young poets. She teaches at Encore Academy for the Performing Arts in Warrenton.
Shari Wagner
Shari Wagner is the author of three poetry books: The Farm Wife's Almanac (Cascadia, 2019), The Harmonist at Nightfall: Poems of Indiana (Bottom Dog Press, 2013), and Evening Chore (Cascadia, 2005). She earned an MFA from Indiana University. She was named Indiana State Poet Laureate for 2016-2017.