A native of Mississippi, Benjamin Morris is a poet, writer, and researcher whose work appears in the United States and Europe.

He is the author of Coronary (Fitzgerald Letterpress, 2011), Hattiesburg, Mississippi: A History of the Hub City (History Press, 2014), and Ecotone (Antenna/Press Street Press, 2017). His writing appears in The Oxford American, The Southern Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lithub, The Guardian, and The Scottish Review of Books. His next book, a full-length collection of poetry entitled The Singing River, is forthcoming from Belle Point Press in early 2025.

Among other honors, he has received a Pushcart nomination, the Academy of American Poets Prize from Duke University, and the Chancellor’s Medal for Poetry from the University of Cambridge, where he earned his Ph.D. His work has received two poetry fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, academic and creative fellowships from Tulane University, and a residency from A Studio in the Woods, as well as the 2021 Words & Music Writing Competition for Poetry, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. He lives in New Orleans, where he serves as one of the coordinators for the New Orleans Poetry Festival.

photo by David G. Spielman