Ed Madden

Ed Madden is the author of five books and four chapbooks of poetry, including Ark (2016), a book about his father’s last months in hospice care, and most recently A pooka in Arkansas. He is a professor of English and the former director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches Irish literature, queer studies, and creative writing. Madden served as the poet laureate for the City of Columbia, SC, 2015-2022. He is recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and artist residencies at the Hambidge Center in Georgia and the Instituto Sacatar in Itaparica, Brazil. Madden grew up on a rice and soybean farm in rural northeast Arkansas.