Kathy Fagan

Kathy Fagan received an MFA from Columbia University and a PhD in English from the University of Utah.

Fagan is the author of seven books of poetry: The Unbecoming (W. W. Norton, 2026); Bad Hobby (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the 2023 William Carlos Williams Award; Sycamore (Milkweed Editions, 2017), for which she was awarded the Ohio Poet of the Year Award and was a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Award; Lip (Eastern Washington University Press, 2009); The Charm (Zoo Press, 2002); MOVING & ST RAGE (University of North Texas Press, 1999), winner of the 1998 Vassar Miller Prize for Poetry; and The Raft (Dutton Press, 1985), winner of the National Poetry Series.

Fagan is the recipient of fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. 

Fagan is a professor emerita of English at Ohio State University, where she directed the MFA program and served as both the poetry editor of Ohio State University Press and an advisor to The Journal.