Bio
Doug Ramspeck is the author of nine collections of poetry, one collection of short stories, and a novella. His latest books include Blur (winner of the Tenth Gate Prize, The Word Works, 2023), Book of Years (Cloudbank Books, 2021), Under Black Leaves (winner of the novella prize, Etchings Press, University of Indianapolis, 2020), Distant Fires (winner of the Grayson Books Poetry Prize, 2020), and Black Flowers (LSU Press, 2018). Other books are The Owl That Carries Us Away (2018), winner of the 2016 G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, and Original Bodies (2016), winner of the Michael Waters Poetry Prize and published by Southern Indiana Review Press. He is also the author of Mechanical Fireflies (2011), selected by Mary Ruefle for the Barrow Street Press Poetry Book Prize, Possum Nocturne (2010), and Black Tupelo Country (2008), which received the 2007 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. His chapbook, Where We Come From, appeared in 2009.
Hundreds of Ramspeck’s poems have been published by literary journals that include The Kenyon Review, Slate, The Georgia Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and The Missouri Review. His short fiction has appeared in Southwest Review, Iowa Review, Narrative, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, South Carolina Review, Cincinnati Review, and many others.
He is a three-time recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, a finalist for the UNT Rilke Prize, and the winner of the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction.
His short story, “Balloon,” was listed as a Distinguished Story of 2018 by The Best American Short Stories.
His flash fiction story, “Snow Crow,” received First Place in the Bath Flash Fiction 19th Award.
Married to Beth Sutton-Ramspeck—a Victorianist and Harry Potter scholar—Ramspeck is a retired Professor of English from The Ohio State University and lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina. A grown daughter, Lee, teaches for a Montessori public school in Charlotte. Other members of the Black Mountain household include Siri (a dog named for Sirius Black from the Harry Potter series, not for the virtual assistant), and Reggie (a cat named for Regulus Black).
