Melissa M. Crowe

Dr. Crowe holds an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. She is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) and Lo (University of Iowa Press, 2023), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, and in 2021 she was awarded the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, Image, the New England Review, Poetry Northwest, and the Rumpus, among other places, and has been featured at Poetry Daily and in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. She is the chair of the Department of Creative Writing at UNCW, where she teaches poetry and publishing.

Education

BA in English, University of Maine
MFA in Poetry, Sarah Lawrence College
PhD in English, University of Georgia

Specialization in Teaching

Dr. Crowe teaches creative writing pedagogy as well as undergraduate and graduate poetry workshops and craft classes, often with a special seminar focus; recent topics have included the sonnet, the confessional mode, speculative poetics, and queer poetics.

Research Interests

Transformative pedagogy, critical theory, 20th/21st century poetry, queer poetics, the confessional/post-confessional lyric, working-class writing and cultures

Professional Service

Dr. Crowe serves as department chair; prior to this role, she served as MFA coordinator and helped to train and mentor graduate teaching assistants in the Department of Creative Writing at UNCW. She was, for several years, the editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal and currently screens manuscripts for Alice James Books. She has taught workshops for regional state poetry societies and the North Carolina Writers Network, and she has served as a mentor for the Adroit Summer Mentorship Program.

Honors & Awards

Iowa Poetry Prize
Finalist for the Brittingham and Felix Pollack Awards and the Alice James Award
Robert H. Winner Memorial Award , Poetry Society of America