Ed Ochester
Ed Ochester is the author of numerous books, including Sugar Run Road, Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New, The Republic of Lies, and The Land of Cockaigne.
Biography
Ochester’s latest book of poetry is Sugar Run Road (Autumn House Press). His others include Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New (Autumn House Press, 2007), The Republic of Lies, a chapbook (Adastra Press, 2007), The Land of Cockaigne (Story Line, 2001), Snow White Horses: Selected Poems 1973–1988 (Autumn House, 2000), Cooking in Key West (Adastra Press, 2000), Changing the Name to Ochester (Carnegie Mellon, 1988), Miracle Mile (Carnegie Mellon, 1984), and Dancing on the Edges of Knives (University of Missouri Press, 1973).
He is the editor of the Pitt Poetry Series at the University of Pittsburgh Press and edited American Poetry Now (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). He is also the general editor for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction at the press. With Peter Oresick, he edited The Pittsburgh Book of Contemporary American Poetry and, with Judith Vollmer, he edits the poetry magazine, 5 AM. Ochester has received fellowships in poetry from the NEA and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He received the George Garrett Award from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and the Artist of the Year award from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, a major cash award given annually to one established artist in Western Pennsylvania, selected from all fields.
His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2007 and 2013, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies. Educated at Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Wisconsin, Ochester has taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and was for 20 years the director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh. He was twice elected president of AWP. He lives, as he says, “in the sticks” outside Pittsburgh.