Mark Sanders

Mark Sanders has been a resident of East Texas for 20 years--nine years in the Houston metro area, and 12 in the Piney Woods of Nacogdoches County.  Born, raised, and educated in Nebraska, where he took his first Ph.D. in English 1989, specializing in Modern Poetry, he holds a second Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Idaho (2013). His poems, stories, critical essays, and creative essays have appeared in publications in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, including Glimmer Train, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, River Teeth, and Western American Literature; he has published more than 500 poems, stories, and essays.  Among his books of poetry are Before We Lost Our Ways (1996), Here in the Big Empty (2005), The Suicide (1988), Conditions of Grace: New and Selected Poems (2011), Landscapes, with Horses (2018), and, most recently, In a Good Time: Poems. His critical publications include Riddled with Light:  Metaphor in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats (2013) and (as editor) The Weight of the Weather: Regarding the Poetry of Ted Kooser (2018).  

 

Currently, he has a collection of creative non-fiction (Homecoming Parade) under consideration.  He is working on a short story collection, tentatively entitled Why Guineas Fly.

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Sanders's work has long been devoted to Great Plains literature--most specifically, Nebraska poetry.  In 2007, Sanders received the Mildred Bennett Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book for fostering Nebraska's literary heritage, in part for his study on Great Plains writers but also for his 30-year career of publishing emerging and established Great Plains poets via his Sandhills Press imprint.  In 2016, he received the Nebraska Book Award for A Sandhills Reader: 30 Years of Great Writing from the Great Plains.  He also received a Nebraska Book Award in 2018 for The Weight of the Weather: Regarding the Poetry of Ted Kooser and in 2019 for Landscapes, with Horses.  He was primary consultant to Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology 1867-2017, edited by Daniel Simon, which won the 2018 Nebraska Book Award for a poetry anthology.  In July 2018, he was inducted into the Ord (Nebraska) Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame for his lifelong work as a writer, editor, and teacher; he received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Nebraska-Kearney in 2019.  His most recent honors include winning the 2020 Spur Award for best poem from the Western Writers of America; the poem, "Three Kinds of Pleasure," appears in In a Good Time.  His poem, "The Still Life," was featured in The New York Times, in translation in Vietnamese, and as part of a series of exhibits with Dolby Chadwick Gallery in San Francisco.  

 

Sanders has taught in colleges and universities in Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and Idaho.  He currently is Associate Dean of the College of Liberal and Applied Arts at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he and his wife run a small peach orchard and horse farm.

 

For additional information, see these links:

 

Backwaters Press site:  http://thebackwaterspress.com/our-authors/mark-sanders/

 

Kelly Cherry's commentary for Poetry:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2013/01/reading-list-january-2013/

 

The Poetry Foundation:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245342

 

Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry Column:  https://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/detail/412

 

Shenandoah online:  https://shenandoahliterary.org/651/2015/07/21/counting-horses/

 

Greg Kuzma's review for Prairie Schooner:  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/487033/pdf

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The Poetry Foundation's "Poem of the Day":   https://www.facebook.com/SFACLAA/posts/682683631902835

 

http://norfolkdailynews.com/northeast_news/northeast_campus_news/texas-poet-to-read-his-work-at-visiting-writer-s/article_5883412c-8702-11e5-bef7-0bf652787892.html

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https://permafrostmag.uaf.edu/2016/10/25/nominations-and-notables/

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Cameron Conaway's review of Here in the Big Empty:  https://www.rattle.com/here-in-the-big-empty-by-mark-sanders/

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https://www.wsc.edu/news/article/145/language_and_literature_department_to_host_plains_writers_series_and_poetry_slam

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http://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2015/01/mark-sanders-cranes-texas-january.html

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