Campbell McGrath

Campbell McGrath was born in Chicago in 1962 and grew up in Washington, D.C. He received his BA in English language and literature from the University of Chicago and his MFA in creative writing from Columbia University in New York City.

McGrath is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including Fever of Unknown Origin (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023); Nouns & Verbs: New and Selected Poems (Ecco Press, 2019); XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century (Ecco Press, 2016), a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize; In The Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys (Ecco Press, 2012); Shannon (Ecco Press, 2009); and Seven Notebooks (Ecco Press, 2007). His third book, Spring Comes to Chicago (Ecco Press, 1996), won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

McGrath’s other literary prizes include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, a USA Knight Fellowship, and a Witter-Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress.

About his work, David Biespiel writes,

McGrath has already developed a signature style that is brutally expansive, slangy, and rife with high- and low-toned jargon. His ‘promethean eruptions’ are at once explosive, swaggering, opportunistic, and flip […] a brilliant bubbling forth of a comic and serious intelligence.

McGrath lives in Miami and teaches creative writing at Florida International University, where he is the Philip and Patricia Frost Professor of Creative Writing and a Distinguished University Professor of English. In January 2025, he served as Guest Editor of Poem-a-Day.