Roger Reeves

Reeves was born and raised in southern New Jersey. He earned a B.A. in English from Morehouse College, an M.A. in English from Texas A & M University, an MFA from the James A. Michener Center for Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.[1]

Reeves' work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Tin House, and The Paris American.[2] His debut collection of poetry, King Me,[3] was published in 2013 by Copper Canyon Press and was honored as a Library Journal “Best Poetry Book of 2013.”[4] His second collection of poetry, Best Barbarian, was published in 2022 by W.W. Norton and became a finalist for the National Book Award.[5]

Reeves has been awarded a 2015 Whiting Award, a 2013 National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship,[6] a 2013 Pushcart Prize,[7] a 2008 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation,[8] two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and two Cave Canem Fellowships.[9] For the 2014–2015 school year, Reeves was a Hodder Fellow of Princeton University.[10]

Reeves was an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago,[1] and is now an associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.[11] In 2021, he was awarded the Suzanne Young Murray Fellowship at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.[12] In 2023, Reeves received a Guggenheim Fellowship[13] and a Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.[14]

His book Best Barbarian was the winner of the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize.[15]