Douglas Kearney

Douglas Kearney is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts, where he teaches creative writing with specializations in poetry, nonfiction, and libretto. He holds an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts and a B.A. from Howard University. Kearney directs the Creative Writing Program and contributes to graduate education through diversity-focused workshops.

His research explores black aesthetics, experimental writing, and performance through interdisciplinary frameworks connecting poetry, hip hop studies, and cultural criticism. Recent scholarly work examines racial formation in performance contexts and innovative textual practices in African American literature.

Major honors include the McKnight Presidential Fellowship (2021-2024), Campbell Opera Librettist Prize (2021), Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, and Whiting Award. He has received residencies from Cave Canem Foundation and Rauschenberg Foundation.

Creative works include the poetry collections Sho (2021) and Buck Studies (2016), and the libretto for the opera Sweet Land (2020). His collaborative album Fodder blends poetry with electronic music.