Gary McDowell

Biography

Dr. Gary L. McDowell (Ph.D., Western Michigan University) is an Associate Professor of English.  He specializes in Creative Writing and contemporary American poetics.  His research interests include the prose poem, the lyric essay, disjunctive poetics, and creative writing pedagogy.  His secondary teaching interests include composition, hybrid literature, and creative nonfiction.  Getting students interested in writing, however possible, is Dr. McDowell's true passion.  In addition, he is a widely published poet and critic. He is the author of a collection of lyric essays, Caesura: Essays (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017) and five collections of poetry, including Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None (Burnside Review Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Press Book Award; Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014); and American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Orphic Prize in Poetry. He's also the co-editor of the best-selling anthology, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010).  His writing has won awards from Green Mountains Review, Burnside Review Books, Grist: The Journal for Writers, Zone 3, Minnetonka Review, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, Dream Horse Press, The National Poetry Review, and others, and his poems and essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including American Poetry Review, The Nation, Gulf Coast, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Colorado Review. Recently, his essay, “An Eye that Never Closes in Sleep: A Nightbook,” was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2015.