Mary Biddinger is a poet and flash fiction writer who lives in Akron, Ohio. She is Professor of English at the University of Akron, where she is on the faculty of the NEOMFA creative writing program. Her most recent poetry collection is Department of Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2022). She is co-editor, with Julie Brooks Barbour, of A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (University of Akron Press, 2024). 

Biddinger’s current project is a flash fiction novella titled The Girl with the Black Lipstick. Her fiction can be found at DIAGRAM, Gone Lawn, On the Seawall, and Always Crashing, among others. Poems have recently appeared in Had, Under a Warm Green Linden, Diode, and A Dozen Nothing. 

Biddinger teaches graduate courses such as Literature for Creative Writers, Craft and Theory of Prose Poetry, and Flash Fiction Workshop, as well as introductory and advanced undergraduate creative writing workshops. Since 2008 she has edited the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron Press.

Biddinger 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. 

Learn more about Mary Biddinger’s 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.