Davis McCombs

Davis McCombs was born and raised in Kentucky. He received a BA in 1993 from Harvard University and an MFA in 1995 from the University of Virginia. From 1996 to 1998, he attended Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. Between 1991 and 2001, he also worked as a park ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park.

He is the author of lore (University of Utah Press, 2016), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize; Dismal Rock (Tupelo Press, 2007), winner of the Dorset Prize; and Ultima Thule (Yale University Press, 2000), selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

McCombs’s poetry is known for its exploration of his native Kentucky’s landscape and history. Linda Gregerson writes, “With infinite patience and luminous particularity, Davis McCombs unearths the traces of those-who-have-passed-before-us through the material world.”

He has received fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Foundation. He directs the Program in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas and lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Bibliography

lore (University of Utah Press, 2016)
Dismal Rock (Tupelo Press, 2007)
Ultima Thule (Yale University Press, 2000)