Erica Dawson

Erica Dawson was born and raised in Columbia, Maryland. She earned a bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University and is a graduate of the MFA program at Ohio State University, where she won the college's Academy of American Poets Prize.

Dawson's debut collection Big-Eyed Afraid received the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and was subsequently published by Waywiser Press. X.J. Kennedy has called Dawson "the most exciting younger poet I've seen in years," and said "I can't recall finding this much energy between two covers since (Sylvia Plath's) Ariel." Alan Shapiro has written that Big-Eyed Afraid is "one of the most compelling and entertaining books of poetry I've read in I don't know how long."

Dawson's work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2008, Southwest Review, Harvard Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Raintown Review, among other journals and anthologies. She is currently the Elliston Fellow in Poetry at the University of Cincinnati, where she is pursuing a doctorate in English and comparative literature.

Online Resources:

Waywiser Press page
Contemporary Poetry Review interview
Four poems in Unsplendid
Reading at the Hammer Museum (audio)
Two poems in Blackbird

Selected Bibliography:

Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser Press 2006)