Eric McHenry – poet laureate of Kansas

Current Kansas Poet Laureate Eric McHenry will give a presentation as part of Harper Public Library's Pulitzer Prize Centennial project.

McHenry, of Lawrence, Kansas, is the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Kansas. Eric is a nationally known poet and associate professor of English at Washburn University in Topeka. His work has been featured in publications such as Poetry International, Slate, Yale Review, and Topeka magazine, among many others. He also contributes poetry reviews for The New York Times and Columbia magazine. Odd Evening, his third book of poems, will be published by Waywiser Press in 2016.

A fifth-generation Topeka native, Eric has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for poetry seven times and received the Theodore Roethke Prize in 2011. His first book of poems, Potscrubber Lullabies, earned him the prestigious Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 2007 — the largest American prize for a first book of poetry.