2020 Poetry Shortlist
Shari Wagner is a former Indiana Poet Laureate (2016-2017) and the author of three books of poems: The Farm Wife’s Almanac, The Harmonist at Nightfall, and Evening Chore. Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, Indiana Review, Shenandoah, The Writer’s Almanac, and American Life in Poetry and was performed as part of Finding Home: Indiana at 200, a production of the Indiana Repertory Theatre.
Wagner’s writing awards include grants from the Indiana Arts Commission, two Creative Renewal Fellowships from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and Shenandoah’s The Carter Prize for the Essay. She earned an M.F.A. from Indiana University and teaches creative writing for the Indiana Writers Center, the Arts in the Parks and Historic Sites program, IUPUI’s Religion, Spirituality & the Arts Initiative, and Bethany Theological Seminary’s graduate program in theopoetics and writing.
As a writer, Wagner, who was born in Goshen and grew up in Wells County, is influenced by an appreciation for Indiana’s history and landscape, as well as her cross-cultural experiences in Somalia, Kenya, Honduras, Haiti, and among the Clifton-Choctaw of Louisiana. With her father, Gerald Miller, she co-authored the non-fiction books, A Hundred Camels and Making the Rounds: Memoirs of a Small-Town Doctor. She and her husband Chuck live in Westfield and are the parents of two grown daughters. You can learn more about her by visiting her websites at www.shariwagnerpoet.com and www.throughthesycamores.com.
See the entire poetry shortlist or learn more about the 2020 Awards.