Justin Hamm

Justin Hamm was born on May 3, 1980, in Bloomington, Illinois. He received a BS from MacMurray College, an MFA from Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, and completed his educational certification at University of Missouri–Columbia. 

Hamm is the author of five books of poetry: O Death (Spartan Press, 2024); Drinking Guinness with the Dead (Spartan Press, 2022); The Inheritance (Blue Horse Press, 2019); American Ephemeral (Kelsay Books, 2017); and Lessons in Ruin (Aldrich Press, 2014). He is also the creator of Poet Baseball Cards and the founding editor of the museum of americana. In 2022, he delivered a performance titled “The American Midwest: A Story in Poems” at TEDx Oshkosh. In 2019, his poem “Goodbye, Sancho Panza” was studied worldwide as a part of the World Scholar’s Cup curriculum. 

Hamm was chosen as a 2024 and 2022 Woody Guthrie Poet, a 2020 Missouri Arts Council Featured Artist, a finalist for the 2018 River Styx International Poetry Prize, and the winner of St. Louis Poetry Center’s 2014 Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Award. 

For more than two decades, Hamm has served as an English teacher and librarian in Missouri public schools. He currently works as an elementary school librarian in Mexico, Missouri, where he lives. In 2025, he was appointed as poet laureate of Missouri through 2027.