Rodney Jones is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Salvation Blues (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), which was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and Elegy for the Southern Drawl (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has won two Pushcart Prizes and has been selected for nine editions of Best American Poetry. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, and the Theodore Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2016, he was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame, and in 2008, he was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He taught at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the Warren Wilson low-residency MFA program and served as the Mary Rodgers Field Distinguished University Professor at Depauw University and the Visiting Elliston Poet at the University of Cincinnati.  

Photo by Jacqueline Bishop