Katie Hays

Katie Hays is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Bucknell University, where she teaches poetry and fiction. Starting in Fall 2025, she will serve as Director of Bucknell's Creative Writing Program. She also offers Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program courses in poetry at local prisons and regularly conducts poetry workshops on campus.

Professor Hays is the author of four books of poetry, with her most recent being Anthropocene Lullaby (Carnegie Mellon 2022). She co-translated Before Wisdom: The Early Poems of Paul Verlaine with Keith Waldrop (World Poetry Books 2023). Her poems have been featured by Ada Limón on The Slowdown podcast and included in Best American Poetry.

Hays' creative work focuses on contemporary American poetry, nature poetry, and the intersection of ecological concerns with human experience. Her poetry is characterized by meticulous linguistic precision, sharp imagery, and exploration of minute particulars in the natural world. She examines themes of transformation, motherhood, grief, and humanity's relationship with the environment across her publications.

Her publications show a consistent evolution of engagement with environmental themes, from her 2009 work Dear Apocalypse through Early Creatures, Native Gods (2012), Windthrow (2017), and most recently Anthropocene Lullaby (2022), demonstrating her development as a poet deeply engaged with ecological concerns in the Anthropocene era.

• Poems featured by Ada Limón on The Slowdown podcast
• Included in Best American Poetry

Professor Hays teaches creative writing with a focus on poetry and fiction (particularly the short story). She is involved in community outreach through prison education programs and regularly offers poetry workshops. Her work has received praise from notable poets including Todd Davis, who described her as 'an indispensable poet whose exquisite and fierce music captures the other-than-human world,' and Mary Szybist, National Book Award winner.