Press & Media

Short bio

Erin Hoover is the author of the poetry collections Barnburner (Elixir, 2018), No Spare People (Black Lawrence, 2023), and Consent (Black Lawrence, 2027), and she is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Cookeville, Tennessee. She teaches creative writing and literary editing as an associate professor of English at Tennessee Tech University, and curates the Sawmill Poetry reading series.

Full bio

A longer biography, covering her books, teaching, editorial work and the laureateship, is on the about page.

Recent press

• “The Poets Trying to Give AI Taste” by Phoebe Pascoe, The New Statesman, August 15, 2026
• “College Town Talk, Ep. 83 — Erin Hoover,” College Town Talk, July 2026
• “Erin Hoover Joins George Halford to Discuss Finding Meaning in the Moment,” Local Matters, News Talk 94.1, July 20, 2026
• “Tennessee Tech English professor named first poet laureate of Cookeville,” Herald Citizen, February 2, 2026
• “‘Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania’ — Telling the Story of PA through Poetry,” Good Day PA, June 10, 2025

Awards & honors

• Antivenom Award, Elixir Press — Barnburner, selected by Kathryn Nuernberger
• Florida Book Award in Poetry — Barnburner
• The Best American Poetry 2016 — “Girls”
• Best New Poets 2013 — “On the Origin of Species”
• Lambda Literary “Most Anticipated” — No Spare People
• Finalist, Neil Shepard Prize in Poetry, Green Mountains Review
• Finalist, Editors’ Awards 2020, Florida Review
• Faculty Academy Grant 2023, Tennessee Tech — Digital Publishing Lab
• Writing Fellow, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, 2026
• Artist in Residence, Woodstock-Byrdcliffe Guild, 2025
• Residency Award, Firefly Farms / Sundress Academy for the Arts, 2023
• Residency Award, The Hambidge Center, 2019

Selected publication history

• “The Poem I Wrote for Our Life Together,” “The Apartment,” “You Need to Connect with the Heroine of Your Story,” “The Universe Wants” and “A Year Out,” ONE ART: a journal of poetry
• “What if pain no longer ordered the narrative,” The Sun 578
• “On the metaphor, for women, of birthing to creative activity,” “At the child support office” and “Baby care instructions,” Shenandoah 71.1
• “The nineties,” “The power of passive voice” and “What use are you?,” Gargoyle online 3
• “Death parade,” Prairie Schooner 96.3
• “Maternity exhibit in an election year” and “Maternity exhibit as the singularity,” Poetry Northwest 26.1
• “Apartment home in Florida as failure of the imagination,” Cincinnati Review 18.1
• “The Valkyrie,” The Awl — reprinted in Verse Daily
• “Nobody Wanted Such a River,” Alaska Quarterly Review 34.1 & 34.2
• “Anticonfessional,” Narrative
• “Renga for Obama,” Harvard Review

Interview & speaking topics

Poetry · hybrid forms · narrative writing · writing about trauma · the American South · literary magazine editing and publishing · intersectional feminism · creative writing pedagogy

Media contact

julia@juliapublicity.com
Julia Borcherts, Julia Publicity