Education 

PhD, University of Texas, Austin, 1994
MA, University of Texas, Austin, 1989
BS, Biblical Studies, Institute for Christian Studies, Austin, TX, 1992
BA, English and French, Harding University, Searcy, AR, 1985

Specialization

• Irish literature and culture
• British and Irish poetry, late 19th century to present
• LGBTQ literature, queer studies
• creative writing, poetry

Recently Taught Courses

• Out of the Archives and into the Streets: Archives, Art, Activism (honors seminar)
• Photopoetics (graduate seminar)
• Irish Literature
• LGBTQ+ Studies
• LGBTQ Literature
• Sexuality and Justice (honors seminar)

Activities

With co-editor Margot Backus, I recently completed work on annotated bibliography of Irish queer literature for Oxford University Press. From 2015-2022, I served as the Poet Laureate for the City of Columbia, South Carolina. At present I am completing three projects: a study of Irish and queer time, a new book of poetry, and a collection of essays based on my time in Brazil.

Accolades

• A pooka in Arkansas (2023) selected as 2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection winner
• USC Women’s & Gender Studies Teaching Award, 2023
• SC Governor's Award for the Arts, 2022
• Breakthrough Leadership in Research Award, USC, 2022
• William B. Neenan Visiting Fellowship in Irish Studies, Boston College Ireland, 2017

Research

My scholarship falls at the intersection on Irish studies and sexuality studies, with recent publications on queer migrant writing, queer archives, and gay rugby. I have also published six books of poetry.

Publications 

BOOKS

• A pooka in Arkansas (poems), The Word Works, 2023.
• A story of the city: poems occasional and otherwise, 2015-2022 (poems from work as city poet laureate), Muddy Ford Press, 2023.
• Ark (poems), Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016.
• Nest (poems), Salmon Poetry, 2014.
• Prodigal: Variations (poems), Lethe Press, 2011.
• Signals (poems), winner of the SC Poetry Book Prize, University of SC Press, 2008.
• Tiresian Poetics: Modernism, Sexuality, Voice 1888-2001, Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2008. as editor
• Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio(radio essays), with Candace Chellew Hodge, Hub City Press, 2010.

SELECTED ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

•  “Babble.” In Handbook of Poetic Forms. Jessica Bundschuh and Irmtraud Huber, eds. De Gruyter, 2025. Forthcoming.
•  “Under the Sign of the Clock: Queer Time, AIDS Time, and Clery’s Clock,” Review of Irish Studies in Europe, 2023.
• “The Irish Bachelor.” In The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism. Maud Ellmann, Sian White, and Vicki Mahaffey, eds. Edinburgh UP, 2021.
• “Queering, Querying Irish Studies.” In Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies. Renée Fox, Mike Cronin, and Brian Ó Conchubhair, eds. Routledge, 2020.
•  “The Queer Contemporary: Time and Temporality in Queer Writing.” In The New Irish Studies (Twenty-First Century Critical Revisions). Paige Reynolds, ed. Cambridge UP, 2020.

POETRY - RECENT AND SELECTED

• Poems online at The Academy of American Poets.
• “Postcards from Arkansas,” “Postcards from Hambidge,” “Praise Song, June 2020,” “Stitches,” and “Vanishing” [5 poems], in Southern Voices: The Power of Place, edited by Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer. Lamar University Press, 2024.
• “I dreamt I dwelt” and “Fairy tale [What you thought was a wolf],” The Stony Thursday Book 18 (winter 2022). Limerick Arts, 2022.
• “Viscous,” in Queer Nature. Michael Walsh, ed. Pittsburg PA: Autumn House, 2022.
• “Self-portrait as a series of science projects,” Impossible Archetype 16,
• “On Meeting a Pooka: Five Poems,” Irish University Review1 (May 2023), special issue Irish Gothic Studies Today. [Short essay with 4 poems from A pooka in Arkansas and “Those summer nights” commissioned for special issue.]
•  “Silent caller, dorm telephone,” StorySouth 53 (spring 2022).
• “A pooka in Arkansas,” The Forward Book of Poetry 2021: The Best Poems from the Forward Prizes. London: Bookmark, 2020.

SELECTED REVIEWS AND OTHER ESSAYS

• “Jerome Leaning Over His Book” (winner of the 2022 Best Spiritual Literature Award, nonfiction). In Best Spiritual Literature vol 8, 2023. Luke Hankins, Nathan Poole, and Karen Tucker, eds. Orison Books, 2023. 37-47.
• “A language of flowers,” Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies1 (April 2022): 35-37.
• “Bridges,” Channel [Irish environmental journal], 25 April 2022.
• “What the Owl Says: Politics, Empathy, and Complicity in Edward Thomas’s ‘The Owl,’” with “Flood” [poem], American Poets: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets 61 (fall-winter 2021):13-18.

OTHER

• “On Return & Redemption: Ed Madden in Conversation with Kwame Dawes,” interview in conjunction with Michigan Quarterly Review special issue on Caregiving, Heather McHugh, ed. MQR website, 1 Oct 2018.
•  “How to Lift Him,” TedXColumbiaSC, 20 Jan 2014.