Mary Biddinger is a writer and professor who lives in Akron, Ohio. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Akron, where she directs the NEOMFA creative writing program. 

Her novella-in-flash titled The Girl with the Black Lipstick was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2025. Her most recent poetry collections are Department of Elegy (2022) and Partial Genius: Prose Poems (2019). She is also co-editor, with Julie Brooks Barbour, of A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (University of Akron Press, 2024). 

Biddinger teaches graduate courses such as Literature for Creative Writers, Craft and Theory of Prose Poetry, and Flash and Microfiction Workshop, as well as introductory and advanced undergraduate creative writing workshops in poetry and fiction. She has received the mid-career Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, as well as several Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in Creative Writing for her poetry. She was also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry. Biddinger served as poetry editor for the University of Akron Press from 2008 to 2025, and is currently a member of the Advisory Board for Black Lawrence Press.

Learn more about her work at Black Lawrence Press and find updates on LinkedIn and Linktr.ee. 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the National Endowment for the Arts for its support.

This artist was awarded the Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award in Poetry.