Mary Biddinger, Ph.D.
Title: Professor and Chair, NEOMFA Director
Program: NEOMFA
Dept/Program: English
Office: Olin 301B
Phone: 330-972-6960
Email: marybid@uakron.edu
Curriculum Vitae: Download in PDF format
Biography
Dr. Mary Biddinger, Professor of English, is Chair of the Department of English and Director of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (NEOMFA) program. Dr. Biddinger teaches a variety of creative writing and literature courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has been awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize, a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and several Individual Excellence Awards in Poetry from the Ohio Arts Council. Her most recent books are A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (University of Akron Press, 2024) and Department of Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2022) and her novella The Girl with the Black Lipstick is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2025.
Dr. Biddinger joined the faculty of the University of Akron in 2005. She has been the recipient of the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences Service Award (2008) and the Chairs’ Award for Outstanding Achievement in Professional and Community Service (2006). Since 2008, she has been the editor of the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron Press.
Publications
BOOKS:
The Girl with the Black Lipstick (novella, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in July 2025).
A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (co-edited with Julie Brooks Barbour, University of Akron Press, March 2024).
Department of Elegy. Black Lawrence Press, Mount Vernon, NY. January 2022.
Partial Genius: Prose Poems. Black Lawrence Press. Mount Vernon, NY. August 2019.
The Czar: Poems. (with Jay Robinson) Black Lawrence Press. Pittsburgh, PA. August 2016.
Small Enterprise. Black Lawrence Press, Pittsburgh, PA, August 2015.
A Sunny Place with Adequate Water. Black Lawrence Press, Pittsburgh, PA, June 2014.
O Holy Insurgency. Black Lawrence Press, Pittsburgh, PA, January 2013.
Saint Monica (chapbook). Black Lawrence Press, Pittsburgh, PA. May 2011.
The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics. Co-editor, with John Gallaher. The University of Akron Press. Akron, OH. January 2011.
Prairie Fever. Steel Toe Books, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, February 2007.
Education
- PhD in English, Program for Writers, University of Illinois at Chicago
- MFA in Poetry, Bowling Green State University
- BA in English and Creative Writing, The University of Michigan
Courses
Introductory and advanced undergraduate creative writing courses, MFA Literature, MFA Craft and Theory of Poetry, MFA Poetry Workshop, MFA Flash Fiction Workshop.