Justin Wymer, PhD

Dr. Justin Wymer is a poet, nonfiction and cross-genre writer, and educator. Born and raised in southwestern West Virginia, he holds degrees from Harvard University; the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; and the University of Denver, where he studied creative writing and literary arts with a focus on trauma studies, queer stylistics, and literature of excess and difficulty. A winner of the 2012 Captain Jonathan Fay Prize from the Radcliffe Institute for best thesis out of any discipline at Harvard College, Wymer has also received awards and fellowships from Harvard Office for the Arts, University of Iowa, University of Denver, Academy of American Poets, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Spanish Ministry for Culture and Sport. Wymer’s poems, interviews, translations, and essays have appeared in various journals, including The Adroit Journal, Atlantean Poets, Beecher’s, Boston Review’s Poet Sampler, Columbia: A Journal of Art and Literature, Conjunctions, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Kenyon Review, Lana Turner, Manchester Review (UK), Nat. Brut, Poetry Daily, The Rumpus, Souvenir Lit, and THRUSH Poetry Journal, and West Branch, among others. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Image, an anthology on Appalachian labor poetics. Wymer’s debut full-length collection, Deed, won the 2018 Antivenom Poetry Award, chosen by Jennifer Franklin, and was published by Elixir Press in 2019. Learn more at https://www.justinwymer.com/