Molly Spencer is a poet, critic, editor, and writing instructor. Her debut collection,
If the House (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) won the 2019 Brittingham Prize judged by Carl Phillips. A second collection,
Hinge (SIU Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Poetry Series, won the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition judged by Allison Joseph.
Invitatory, her forthcoming third collection, won the 2022 New Measure Poetry Prize and will be published in 2024 by Free Verse Editions / Parlor Press. Molly’s poetry has appeared in
Blackbird, Copper Nickel,
FIELD,
The Georgia Review,
Gettysburg Review,
New England Review,
Ploughshares, and
Prairie Schooner. Her critical writing and essays have appeared at
Colorado Review,
The Georgia Review,
Kenyon Review online,
Literary Hub,
The Writer's Chronicle, and
The Rumpus, where she is a senior poetry editor. Molly's work has won a Lucile Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Glenna Luschei Award from
Prairie Schooner, a Writers@Work Fellowship Award, and a faculty fellowship from the University of Michigan's Institute for the Humanities. She holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and an MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and teaches writing at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.