William Olsen
William Olsen
Dr. William Olsen
Professor
Creative Writing; Poetics; Contemporary Poetry
Mailing address
Department of English
Western Michigan University
1903 W Michigan Ave
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5331
Office: (269) 387-2614
Location
619 Sprau
Education
Ph.D., University of Houston (1988)
Biography
William Olsen teaches creative writing and literature courses at the graduate and undergraduate level. He is the author of four collections of poetry, The Hand of God and a Few Bright Flowers (Illinois, 1988), Vision of a Storm Cloud (Triquarterly, 1996), Trouble Lights (Triquarterly, 2002), and Avenue of Vanishing (Triquarterly, 2007).
He is co-editor, with Sharon Bryan, of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life (Sarabande), a critically acclaimed anthology that brings together essays by nationally and internationally established poets on reading as a creative and critical activity. He is the recipient of a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, A Nation/ Discovery Award, The Texas Institute of Arts Award, a Breadloaf Fellowship, and poetry awards from Poetry Northwest and Crazyhorse. His poems and essays have appeared in The New Republic, Georgia Review, Chicago Review, New American Poets of the Nineties, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Poets of the New Century, and many other magazines and anthologies. He is the editor of New Issues Press.