Kevin Prufer

Kevin Prufer was born in Cleveland in 1969. He received a BA from Wesleyan University and MFA degrees from Hollins University and Washington University in St. Louis.

Prufer is the author of ten poetry collections, including Good People: Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2027); The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 UNT Rilke Prize; How He Loved Them (Four Way Books, 2018), which was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award; Churches (Four Way Books, 2014); and Strange Wood (Louisiana State University Press, 1998). He has also edited several volumes of poetry, including Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (Graywolf Press, 2017), with Martha Collins. He has also published a novel, titled Sleepaway (Acre Books, 2024). 

Of his work, Marie Howe writes, “Kevin Prufer has courage and compassion. And he places words so beautiful and accurate and terrifying along a line you can’t help but read to the end….”

Prufer has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. He is a professor in the creative writing program at the University of Houston and a cocurator of The Unsung Masters Series, a book series that brings work by long-forgotten writers to new readers. The 2026 Texas Poet Laureate, Prufer lives in Houston.