Kevin Prufer
Kevin Prufer’s (b. 1969, Cleveland, OH) newest books are The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 Rilke Prize, and Sleepaway: a Novel (Acre Books, 2024), a finalist for the Society of Midland Authors Award. Among his eight other books are Churches, which was named one of the best ten books of 2015 by The New York Times, and How He Loved Them, which was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award for the best poetry book from the American literary press. Prufer’s work appears widely in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Paris Review, and Poetry, among others. He is the 2026 Texas Poet Laureate and Professor of English at The University of Houston, where he also directs The Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to rediscovering great, long forgotten authors. For more on Prufer’s writing and books, visit: http://www.