About Marcus

Marcus Wicker was born in Ann Arbor and raised in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He is the author of three books of poetry: DEAR MOTHERSHIP (Ecco, 2026), Silencer (Mariner/Ecco, 2017)—winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award—and Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial, 2012), selected by D.A. Powell for the National Poetry Series. A 2023 - 2024 Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow, his honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize, and Ruth Lilly Fellowship, as well as fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center, and Cave Canem. Wicker’s poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Oxford American, and POETRY. He founded the Memphis Writing Workshop, an open-door community space designed to provide adult poets and storytellers with opportunities for craft development and artistic fellowship. Marcus is a Professor and the Orgill Chair of English at the University of Memphis, where he teaches in the MFA program.