B. H. Fairchild

Last updated

B.H. Fairchild (born 1942) is an American poet and former college professor. His most recent book is An Ordinary Life (W.W. Norton, 2023), and his poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker , The Paris Review , The Southern Review , Poetry , TriQuarterly , The Hudson Review , Salmagundi , The Sewanee Review. His third poetry collection, The Art of the Lathe, winner of the 1997 Beatrice Hawley Award (Alice James Books, 1998), brought Fairchild's work to national prominence, garnering him a large number of awards and fellowships including the William Carlos Williams Award, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, California Book Award, Natalie Ornish Poetry Award, PEN Center USA West Poetry Award, National Book Award (finalist), Capricorn Poetry Award, [1] and Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships. The book ultimately gave him international prominence, as The Waywiser Press in England published the U.K. edition of the book. The Los Angeles Times wrote that "The Art of the Lathe by B.H. Fairchild has become a contemporary classic—a passionate example of the plain style, so finely crafted and perfectly pitched...workhorse narratives suffused with tenderness and elegiac music." [2]

Contents

Fairchild has written that a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts was vital to his career as a poet: "It's very simple: without an NEA Fellowship in 1989–90, I would not have been able to complete my second book, Local Knowledge, nor have had the necessary time to compose the core poems for The Art of the Lathe, my third book, which, I am proud to say, received the Kingsley Tufts Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award, thus bringing my work to a wider audience than the immediate members of my family and also, therefore, making future work possible." [3]

He was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in small towns in the oil fields of Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, later working through high school and college for his father, a lathe machinist. [4] He taught English and Creative Writing at California State University, San Bernardino [5] and Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Claremont, California with his wife, Patti, and dog, Minnie. As of 2011, it has been announced that Fairchild will teach at The University of North Texas.

Books

Full-Length Poetry Collections

Chapbooks

Special Editions

Literary Criticism

Honors and awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorianne Laux</span> American poet

Dorianne Laux is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martín Espada</span> Puerto Rican poet

Martín Espada is a Puerto Rican-American poet, and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches poetry. Puerto Rico has frequently been featured as a theme in his poems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Smith (poet)</span> American poet (born 1955)

Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. She is on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alberto Ríos</span> American poet (born 1952)

Alberto Álvaro Ríos is a US academic and writer who is the author of ten books and chapbooks of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir.

Susan Mitchell is an American poet, essayist and translator who wrote the poetry collections Rapture and Erotikon. She is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanley Plumly</span> American poet (1939-2019)

Stanley Plumly was an American poet and the director of University of Maryland, College Park's creative writing program.

Marianne Boruch is an American poet whose published work also includes essays on poetry, sometimes in relation to other fields and a memoir about a hitchhiking trip taken in 1971.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly was an American poet and teacher. Born in Palo Alto, California, Kelly grew up in southern Indiana and lived much of her adult life in central Illinois. An intensely private woman, little is known about her life.

Donald Revell is an American poet, essayist, translator and professor.

Ellen Bryant Voigt is an American poet. She served as the Poet Laureate of Vermont.

Alan Richard Shapiro is an American poet and professor of English and creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Collier (poet)</span> American writer and academic

Michael Robert Collier is an American poet, teacher, creative writing program administrator and editor. He has published five books of original poetry, a translation of Euripides' Medea, a book of prose pieces about poetry, and has edited three anthologies of poetry. From 2001 to 2004 he was the Poet Laureate of Maryland. As of 2011, he is the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a professor of creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park and the poetry editorial consultant for Houghton Mifflin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice James Books</span> American non-profit poetry press located in Farmington, Maine

Alice James Books is an American non-profit poetry press located in Farmington, Maine and affiliated with the University of Maine at Farmington.

The Alice James Award, formerly the Beatrice Hawley Award, is given annually by Alice James Books. The award includes publication of a book-length poetry manuscript and a cash prize.

Jeffrey W. Harrison is an American poet. Born in Cincinnati, he was educated at Columbia University, where he studied with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro. His most recent poetry collection is Into Daylight, which follows The Names of Things: New & Selected Poems. His poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines, including The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Yale Review, Poets of the New Century. His honors include Pushcart Prizes, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and Amy Lowell Traveling fellowships. He has taught at George Washington University, Phillips Academy, and College of the Holy Cross. He is currently on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. He lives in Dover, Massachusetts.

Sherod Santos is an American poet, essayist, translator and playwright. His newest poetry collection, Square Inch Hours was published in 2017. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, Poetry, The Royal Court Theatre, Proscenium Theatre Journal, American Poetry Review, and The New York Times Book Review. The Algonquin Theatre in New York City, The Side Project in Chicago, the Brooklyn International Theatre Festival, and the Flint Michigan Play Festival have all staged productions of his plays. He wrote the settings for the Sappho poems in the CD Magus Insipiens, composed by Paul Sanchez and sung by soprano Kayleen Sanchez.

Atsuro Riley is an American writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards</span> Poetry awards based at Claremont Graduate University

The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards are a pair of American prizes based at Claremont Graduate University. They are given to poets for their collections of poetry written in the English language, by a citizen or legal resident alien of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Reeves</span> American poet (born 1980)

Roger William Reeves is an American poet and essayist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Rosal</span> Filipino American poet and essayist

Patrick Rosal is a Filipino American poet and essayist.

References

  1. Waywiser Press > Author Page: B.H. Fairchild, The Art of the Lathe Archived November 9, 2006, at the Wayback Machine , accessed October 29, 2006
  2. "Alice James Books > B.H. Fairchild Author Page". Archived from the original on September 26, 2009. Retrieved December 10, 2009.
  3. National Endowment for the Arts Web > Features: Writer's Corner: B.H. Fairchild Archived October 1, 2006, at the Wayback Machine , accessed October 29, 2006
  4. Mariani, Paul A Conversation with B.H. Fairchild, from Image magazine, Fall 2005, reprinted by Poetry Daily Archived November 13, 2006, at the Wayback Machine , accessed October 29, 2006
  5. Claremont Graduate University > Faculty > Emeritus
  6. 1 2 "NEA Literature Fellowships > Forty Years of Supporting American Writers" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 23, 2006. Retrieved July 3, 2009.
  7. "National Book Critics Circle > All Past Winners and finalists". Archived from the original on March 16, 2011. Retrieved December 10, 2009.
  8. "Rockefeller Foundation 2000 Annual Report > Residencies (Fellowship Recipients)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 21, 2007. Retrieved December 10, 2009.
  9. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation > Current Fellows > Search Fellows > B.H. Fairchild