ABOUT

Allan Peterson is the author of six full length books of poetry: This Luminous: New and Selected Poems, (Panhandler Books) a finalist for The Oregon Book Award; Precarious, (42 Miles Press) a finalist for The Lascaux Prize and chosen as one of the four best books of poetry of 2014 by The Chicago Tribune; Fragile Acts, (McSweeney’s Poetry Series), a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Oregon Book Award; As Much As, (Salmon Press, Ireland); All the Lavish in Common, (Juniper Prize, University of Massachusetts); Anonymous Or, (Defined Providence Prize) and eight chapbooks, including Omnivore. winner of the Bateau Press Chapbook Prize; Other Than They Seem, (Tupelo Press), winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Prize., and Any Given Moment ( Right Hand Pointing, online) His seventh and eighth books, Amid This and Also and Also, are forthcoming from Project Poetica, SMU/Bridwell Press.

His poetry appears in several anthologies: “American Poetry At the End of the Millennium,” “Poetry of the American Apocalypse,” (Green Mountains Review), and in critical essays in Stephanie Burt’s “The Poem is You, 60 Contemporary Poets and How to Read Them,” and “Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry,” The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He was selected by Poet Laureate Ted Kooser for his “American Life in Poetry Series” (#159) and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and The State of Florida. He was an invitee to the Cuisle International Poetry Festival in Limerick, Ireland, and a poetry panelist at the 61st Conference on World Affairs, University of Colorado.

A visual artist as well as a poet, he has taught at The State University of New York; Southern Illinois University, and Pensacola State College, where he was chair of the Visual Arts Department and director of the Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts until retiring in 2005.

MFA Painting & Drawing, Southern Illinois University 1968; BFA,Painting &Printmaking, Rhode Island School of Design 1962