“Poetry is the genre of efficiency and mystery. The poem says 'I have something to show you and I’m not going to waste your time.' But the poem also says 'I am magic.' ”
Edgar Kunz
Assistant ProfessorCreative Writing
Edgar Kunz is an Assistant Professor at the Kratz Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College. He is the author of the poetry collections Tap Out (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), named a New & Noteworthy book by the New York Times, and Fixer (Ecco/HarperCollins, forthcoming 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Vanderbilt University, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His work has appeared widely, including in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and on former U. S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s podcast The Slowdown. He lives in Baltimore City and teaches poetry at the graduate level in the low-residency Newport MFA. He is also a Goucher College graduate.
Publications
Fixer (poems), Ecco/HarperCollins, 2023
Tap Out (poems), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019
Poems published widely, including in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Yale Review, AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, and Sewanee Review.
Exhibits or Performances
Highlights from 2019/2020 book tour:
Literary Arts Live @ Bates College (Lewiston, ME)
Brattleboro Literary Festival w/ Phillip B. Williams (Brattleboro, VT)
Brooklyn Book Festival w/ Jericho Brown, Tina Chang, Hafizah Geter, & Hala Alyan (Brooklyn, NY)
BookFest St. Louis @ Left Bank Books w/ Aaron Coleman (St. Louis, MO)
Green Apple Books w/ Jennifer S. Cheng (San Francisco, CA)
Stanford University w/ Grady Chambers (Palo Alto, CA)
Porter Square Books w/ Shubha Sunder (Boston, MA)
McNally Jackson Soho w/ Sam Ross (NYC, NY)
Powell’s Books w/ Dorianne Laux & Anders Carlson-Wee (Portland, OR)
Vanderbilt University w/ Anders Carlson-Wee & Tiana Clark (Nashville, TN)
External Awards, Honors, Grants
Individual Artist Award – Maryland State Arts Council
Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Poetry – Sewanee Writers’ Conference
Winter Fellowship in Poetry – MacDowell
Literature Fellowship – National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Carol Houck Smith Scholarship – Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
“30 Below 30” Writer to Watch – Narrative Magazine
Donald Justice Scholarship – Sewanee Writers’ Conference
Waiter Scholarship – Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
Post-MFA Teaching Fellowship – Vanderbilt University Dept. of English
Academy of American Poets Prize (Judge: Thomas Lux) – Vanderbilt University
University Fellowship in Creative Writing – Vanderbilt University