Ruth Ellen Kocher

Ruth Ellen Kocher is the author of Ending in Planes ( Noemi Press, 2014), Goodbye Lyric: The Gigans and Lovely Gun (Sheep Meadow Press, 2014), domina Un/blued (Tupelo Press, 2013), One Girl Babylon (New Issues Press, 2003), When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering (New Issues Press, 2002), and Desdemona’s Fire (Lotus Press 1999). Her poems have been translated into Persian in the Iranian literary magazine She’r and have appeared in various anthologies including, Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poets, Black Nature, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, An Anthology for Creative Writers: The Garden of Forking Paths, IOU: New Writing On Money, New Bones: Contemporary Black Writing in America. Her work has been published in numerous journals including Torch, Diode, The Medulla Review, Anti-, Callaloo, The Cartier Review, Blackbird, The Superstition Review, Square One, ditch, the Denver Quarterly, and Drunken Boat, Cimarron Review, Ploughshares, African American Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, Washington Square Journal, Crab Orchard Review, and ninth letter among others. She won the Dorset Prize and the 2014 PEN/Open Book Award, and has been awarded fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, and Yaddo. She has taught poetry writing for the University of Missouri, Southern Illinois University, the New England College Low Residency MFA program, the Indiana Summer Writer’s workshop, and Washington University’s Summer Writing program. She is Associate Chair and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Colorado where she teaches Poetry, Poetics, and Literature, and is a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers Magazine.