UIUC Creative Writing

Steve Davenport (PhD, University of Illinois) has served the Creative Writing Program as Associate Director since the position was created in 2004. Recently he stepped down as Nonfiction Editor of Ninth Letter after four and a half years or, fittingly, nine issues. While his role in the program is primarily administrative, he does teach an occasional undergrad tutorial and in Fall 2009 will begin teaching a literature course called Reading for Writers. He’s the author of Uncontainable Noise (2006), which won Pavement Saw Press’s Transcontinental Poetry Prize. His “Murder on Gasoline Lake,” listed as Notable in Best American Essays 2007, is available as a New American Press chapbook. His work has been anthologized, and his poems, stories, and essays have been published in dozens of literary magazines. Recent work appears in The Southern Review, The Literary Review, and Northwest Review. His scholarship includes an essay about Kerouac and work in Boys Don't Cry?: Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S. (Columbia Univ. Press) and one about Richard Hugo’s poetry in All Our Stories Are Here: Critical Perspectives on Montana Literature (Univ. of Nebraska Press).