Simone Muench

Simone Muench is the daughter of hippie parents who named her after Nina Simone. She received her BA and MA from the University of Colorado--Boulder and her PhD from the University of Illinois--Chicago. Her books include The Air Lost in Breathing (Marianne Moore Prize for Poetry; Helicon Nine, 2000), Lampblack & Ash (Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry and New York Times Editor’s Choice; Sarabande, 2005), Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010), and Wolf Centos (Sarabande, 2014). She has written three collaborative books: Disappearing Address, a book of epistolary poems co-written with Philip Jenks (BlazeVox, 2010); Suture, a book of sonnets co-written with Dean Rader, (BLP, 2017); and, Hex & Howl, a chapbook co-written with Jackie K. White (BLP, 2021). With Dean and Jackie (and Sally Ashton), she also edited the anthology They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (BLP, 2018).

In 2014, Muench was awarded the Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award. Other honors include an NEA Poetry fellowship, three Illinois Arts Council fellowships, the PSA’s Bright Lights Big Verse New York Times Square Award, and residency fellowships to Yaddo, Artsmith, and Vermont Studio Center.

She is Professor of English at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies. Currently, she serves as faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review, as a senior poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and as poetry editor for JackLeg Press. In 2018, she founded the HB Sunday Reading Series, which she runs with her co-host Kenyatta Rogers. She is a vegetarian Southerner and a life-long horror film fan.