Denise Low

Denise Low was born in Emporia, Kansas. She received her BA, MA, and PhD (with dissertation honors) in English from the University of Kansas and her MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University.

Low is the author of more than forty books of poetry, essays, and criticism. Her full-length poetry collections are House of Grace, House of Blood (University of Arizona Press, 2024), archival-based poems; Wing (Red Mountain, 2021), a finalist for the Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award; Ghost Stories of the New West (Woodley Memorial Press, 2010), a Kansas Notable Book; Thailand Journal (Woodley Memorial Press, 2003), a Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year; New and Selected Poems (Penthe Press, 1999), rereleased in 2009; Tulip Elegies: An Alchemy of Writing (Penthe, 1993); Starwater (Cottonwood Review Press, 1988); and Spring Geese and Other Poems (University of Kansas Natural History Museum Publications, 1984). 

Low’s works of prose include Natural Theologies: Literature of the New Middle West (Backwaters Press, 2011), the first critical study of Midwestern poets. She also edited Kansas Poems of William Stafford (Woodley Press, 2010).

Low is a founding member of the Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po) and has served on its national board since 2020. She is also a literary programmer for the arts nonprofit The 222. She served as poet laureate of Kansas from 2007 to 2009. From 2008 to 2013, Low was a board member of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and was its president from 2011 to 2012. She has taught as a professor at the University of Kansas, the University of Richmond, and for twenty-seven years at Haskell Indian Nations University where she founded the creative writing program. She currently teaches at Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies in Baldwin City, Kansas.