Thirst

Ed Madden is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, and author of four books of poetry. His first book of poetry, Signals (University of South Carolina Press, 1990), won the 2007 South Carolina Poetry Book Prize. His most recent book, Ark (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), a memoir in poetry of helping with his father’s home hospice care in his last months with cancer, was selected as the 2016 first-year common reading at Newberry College. His chapbook So they can sing (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017) was winner of the 2016 Robin Becker Prize. His poems have appeared in journals such as Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry Ireland Review, as well as in the anthologies Best New Poets 2007 (University of Virginia Press, 2007), The Book of Irish American Poetry (Notre Dame Press, 2008), and Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (University of South Carolina Press, 2016). Madden won the 2010 inaugural Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship in Poetry from the SC Academy of Authors, as well as a 2011 prose fellowship from the SC Arts Commission. In 2015, Madden was named Poet Laureate for the City of Columbia, becoming the first city laureate in the state.