Dr. Mary Biddinger
Title: Interim Chair, Professor, Akron Series in Poetry Editor
Dept/Program: Modern Languages
Office: Olin 301b, Olin 304d
Phone: 330-972-6960
Email: marybid@uakron.edu
Curriculum Vitae: Download in PDF format
Biography
Dr. Mary Biddinger, Professor of English, is Chair of the Department of English and Interim Chair of the Department of Modern Languages. Dr. Biddinger teaches creative writing and literature, with a specialization in poetry, and serves on the faculty of the NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. She has been awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize, a Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and several Individual Excellence Awards in Poetry from the Ohio Arts Council. Her most recent poetry collections are Department of Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2022) and Partial Genius: Prose Poems (Black Lawrence Press, 2019).
Dr. Biddinger has been the recipient of the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences Service Award (2008) and the Chairs’ Award for Outstanding Achievement in Professional and Community Service (2006) at The University of Akron. Since 2008, she has been the editor of the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron Press. From 2009-2012, she served as director of the NEOMFA program.
Publications
BOOKS:
Department of Elegy. Black Lawrence Press, Pittsburgh, PA. January 2022.
Partial Genius: Prose Poems. Black Lawrence Press. Pittsburgh, PA. August 2019.
The Czar: Poems. (with Jay Robinson) Black Lawrence Press. Pittsburgh, PA. August 2016.
Small Enterprise. Black Lawrence Press, Pittsburgh, PA. August 2015.
A Sunny Place with Adequate Water. Black Lawrence Press. Pittsburgh, PA. June 2014.
O Holy Insurgency. Black Lawrence Press. Pittsburgh, PA. January 2013..
Saint Monica. (Chapbook). Black Lawrence Press. Pittsburgh, PA. May 2011.
The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics. Editor (with John Gallaher). The University of Akron Press. Akron, OH. January 2011.
Prairie Fever. Steel Toe Books, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY. February 2007.
JOURNALS:
Dr. Biddinger’s poems have recently appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bennington Review, Crazyhorse, The Laurel Review, Southern Indiana Review, and Thrush Poetry Journal, among others. Her flash fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Always Crashing, DIAGRAM, Gone Lawn, On the Seawall, and West Trestle Review.
Education
- Ph.D. in English, Program for Writers, University of Illinois at Chicago; MFA in Poetry, Bowling Green State University; B.A. in English and Creative Writing, The University of Michigan
Courses
Introductory and Advanced Poetry Writing, MFA Poetry Workshop, Modern American Poetry, International Poetry, American Women Poets, MFA Craft & Theory of Poetry, New Poetry, Women Writers, World Literatures, Theory & Practice of Modern Poetry, British Fiction Since 1925, British Romantic Fiction, Senior Seminar, Writers on Writing