George Bilgere, a professor at John Carroll University, won Utah State University’s 2006 May Swenson Poetry Award for his collection Haywire. Other awards and honors he has received include the 2003 Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, the Devins Award, the University of Akron Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice, and also wrote The Going, Big Bang, and The Good Kiss, which was selected by Poet Laureate Billy Collins as the University of Akron Prize for Poetry winner in 2003.

George has written an extensive collection of poetry that has appeared in numerous journals including Poetry, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, The Sewanee Review, The Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Chicago Review, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. Additionally, they have been added to two editions (1992 and 1999) of the anthology Best American Poetry, and appear in From Both Sides Now: An Anthology of Poetry of the Vietnam War, The Devins Award Anthology, and American Prose and Poetry in the 20th Century.

Growing up in Riverside, California, George received his BA degree from the University of California, Riverside. He received his MA in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis and earned a Ph.D. in contemporary British and American Poetry from the University of Denver in 1988.

After completing his education, George worked in public television in Tokyo, Japan, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Bilbao, Spain, in 1991. He then took teaching positions at the University of Denver and the University of Oklahoma. He frequently holds workshops and poetry readings at schools and universities around the country, and has participated in the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

George now resides in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at John Carroll University.

For more information, please visit www.georgebilgere.com.

George Bilgere will appear on Thursday, Oct. 19, 7 pm, at the Haight Alumni House in Logan and Friday, Oct. 20, at noon at the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium in Provo.