Neil Shepard

Neil Shepard
Born	(1951-01-21) January 21, 1951 Fitchburg, Massachusetts
Notable awards	First Series Award, 1992 MacDowell Fellow
Website
www.neilshepard.com

Neil Shepard (January 29, 1951 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts) is an American poet, essayist, professor of creative writing, and literary magazine editor. He is a recipient of the 1992 Mid-List Press First Series Award for Poetry,^[1] as well as a recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the MacDowell Colony.^[2][3] He routinely participates in poetry reading events throughout the United States.^[4][5]

Career

Shepard received a BA from the University of Vermont, an MFA from Colorado State University, and a Ph.D. from Ohio University. He has taught at Louisiana State University, Rider University in New Jersey and Johnson State College in Vermont. He currently teaches in the low-residency MFA writing program at Wilkes University^[6] and is Senior and Founding Editor of the literary magazine Green Mountains Review.^[7] He has published several books of poetry to positive reviews,^[8][9][10] and his poems and essays appear in such magazines as Antioch Review, AWP Chronicle, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, New American Writing, New England Review, North American Review, Ontario Review, Paris Review, Shenandoah, Small Press Reviews, Southern Review, TriQuarterly and Vermont Public Radio.^[11][12][13]

Poetic Influences

Shepard's first creative writing teacher was David Huddle, poet and short story writer at the University of Vermont. Shepard studied with William Tremblay for his Master's work at Colorado State University and with Stanley Plumly, Wayne Dodd, and Paul Nelson for his doctoral work at Ohio University.^[14][15]

His marriage to Kate Riley, linguistic anthropologist and fiction writer, introduced Shepard to the South Pacific, French language and French colonial culture. He accompanied Riley to the Marquesas Islands, where she conducted her fieldwork on language and culture, and eventually Shepard wrote the Marquesan poems that appear in his second book I'm Here Because I Lost My Way. The birth of his daughter also deeply affected his work. A section of poems called Birth Announcements appears in Shepard's third book, This Far from the Source.^[16]

Other influences on Shepard's poetry include his many years playing piano and guitar, his love of jazz^[17] and classical music, as well as extensive travel, including year-long sojourns in Shanghai, China (1991), the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific (1993), and France (2003).^[11][16] Shepard’s fourth book of poetry, (T)ravel/Un(t)ravel, records these experiences abroad.^[9] Shepard’s long association with Vermont is recorded in his fifth book, Vermont Exit Ramps, which mixes history, natural history, and personal history to investigate life along the highways of Vermont.^[11][13][18]

Publications

• Shepard, Neil (1993). Scavenging the Country for a Heartbeat. Mid-List Press. ISBN 9780922811168. 

• Shepard, Neil (1998). I'm Here Because I Lost My Way. Mid-List Press. ISBN 9780922811380. 

• Shepard, Neil (2006). This Far from the Source. Mid-List Press. ISBN 9780922811724. 

• Shepard, Neil (2011). (T)ravel/Un(t)ravel. Mid-List Press. ISBN 9780922811885. 

• Shepard, Neil (2012). Vermont Exit Ramps. Big Table Publishing Company. ISBN 9780984956760. 

• Shepard, Neil (2015). Hominid Up. Salmon Poetry. p. 86. ISBN 9781908836953. 

References

External links

• Mid-List Press
• Big Table Publishing