Kevin Prufer | |
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 Prufer at AWP 2025 | |
| Born | 1969 (age 55–56) Cleveland, Ohio |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Wesleyan University, Hollins University Washington University in St. Louis |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Website | |
| www | |
Kevin D. Prufer (born 1969 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American poet, novelist, academic, editor, and essayist. He is Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.
Prufer graduated from Western Reserve Academy in 1988. He received a B.A. at Wesleyan University and an M.A. at the Hollins University Writing Program. He went on to earn an MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. He is currently Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and Editor-at-Large of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing , [1] Associate Editor of American Book Review , [2] Co-Curator of the Unsung Masters Series, and the former Vice President/Secretary of the National Book Critics Circle. [3] Prufer currently resides in Houston, Texas, with artist and critic Mary Hallab. [4]
He is the author of many books of poetry and fiction, a prolific editor and anthologist, and he has published poems, essays, and reviews in literary journals and magazines including The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, A Public Space, AGNI, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, [4] Boston Review, Georgia Review , and in The Best American Poetry (2003, 2009, 2021).
His honors include five Pushcart Prizes, and awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Academy of American Poets, The Lannan Foundation and other organizations. Other awards and honors include The Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Series award, the 2024 Rilke Prize for American Poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and more. His poetry collection How He Loved Them as long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and his Churches was listed as one of the ten best poetry books of the year by The New York Times Book Review.
He has been named the 2026–2027 Texas Poet Laureate.
Prufer is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, where he also co-directs the Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to bringing lost voices in world literature to new generations of readers.
Full-Length Books
Anthologies Edited
Poetry Collections In Translation
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