Kathy Fagan

Kathy Fagan is the author of Bad Hobby and Sycamore, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, as well as four previous collections, including The Charm, the National Poetry Series-winning The Raft, and Vassar Miller Prize-winner MOVING & ST RAGE. Fagan’s work has appeared in venues such as the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Poetry, The Nation, the New Republic, Best American Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and an Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship, and served as the Frost Place poet in residence. Fagan is cofounder of the MFA program at The Ohio State University, where she teaches poetry, and coedits the Wheeler Poetry Prize Book Series for The Journal and The Ohio State University Press.

Awards
Kingsley Tufts Award Finalist
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
Vassar Miller Prize
Ingram Merril Foundation Fellowship
Ohio Arts Council Fellowship
Ohioana Award for Editorial Excellence
Ohioana Award for Editorial Excellence
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Books by Kathy Fagan

Poetry

Bad Hobby

Poems
By
Kathy Fagan
A Finalist for the Ohiana Award in Poetry

A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow
A Ohiana Award Finalist in Poetry
A Williams Carlos Williams Award Recipient

From Kingsley Tufts Award finalist Kathy Fagan comes Bad Hobby, a perceptive collection focused on memory, class, and might-have-beens.

Poetry

Sycamore

By
Kathy Fagan
A Finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award

The language of trees is the language of love and loss: in this collection, black walnuts fall where no one can eat or smell them, and cottonwood sends out feverish signals of pollen. And like the bark of the sycamore, which sheds to allow the tree’s expansion, these poems document both pain and tenuous rebirth.

Author Q & A

  • Question

    How has your writing or writing process changed since you started out?

    Kenyon Review
    Answer

    I’m much less precious about writing now than I was when I was young. I write or I don’t write. But I haven’t got the rituals and angst I had about writing when I was a younger writer. On the other hand, I do sense a greater urgency about the work: time’s winged chariot and all. I also cast a wider net in terms of influences: lots of different kinds of writing enter my poems, but other arts, experiences, and stimuli as well. Online access to research materials helps a lot; social media, not so much (insert emoji here). [Read more at Kenyon Review]

  • Question

    Which non-writing-related aspect of your life most influences your writing?

    Kenyon Review
    Answer

    Right now, there are three. I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel with my husband, who is sometimes invited to work out of the country. When we go, I’m on my own to walk, explore, and read and write all day, which is an extraordinary opportunity. We’re also caring for my elderly dad, who lives with us, and navigating health care and services for low-income seniors has become my part-time job. I think I’m also, thanks to psychotherapy, even more conscious of, well, everything—inside and out—so the poems are influenced by that heightened receptivity. [Read more at Kenyon Review]

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