Mary Biddinger

National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry (2015) Two Ohio Arts Council Individual Creativity Excellence Awards Illinois Arts Council Literary Award (2005) Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences Service Award (2008)

Biddinger is the Editor of the Akron Series in Poetry, which sponsors the annual Akron Poetry Prize and publishes three poetry collections every year. Biddinger also serves as co-editor, with John Gallaher, of the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics at the University of Akron Press. The first volume, titled The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics, was published in January, 2011.

She is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Akron, and was Director of the NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program from 2009-2012. Biddinger teaches courses in poetry writing, craft and theory of poetry, and literature.

Mary Biddinger is the author of the poetry collections Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007), Saint Monica (Black Lawrence Press, 2011), O Holy Insurgency (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), and A Sunny Place with Adequate Water (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Guernica, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, 32 poems, Ninth Letter, North American Review, Ploughshares, and Third Coast. Biddinger is the recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry.

In 2007, Biddinger founded Barn Owl Review, an independent literary magazine published in Akron, Ohio.

Mary Biddinger (born May 14, 1974 in Fremont, California) is an American poet, editor, and academic.