Eric McHenry is a fifth-generation Topekan and a graduate of Topeka High School. He attended Beloit College, and then did graduate work at Boston University where he earned his MA in creative writing. McHenry's poems have been featured in many publications, including, The Harvard Review, Slate, and Poetry Northwest, whose editors named McHenry winner of the Theodore Roethke Prize for best poems published in the magazine in 2010. His criticism appears in The New York Times Book Review and Salon. He is a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize, and Potscrubber Lullabies won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He currently lives in Lawrence and teaches creative writing at Washburn University of Topeka. In April 2015 he was announced as the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Kansas.

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• Odd Evening (The Waywiser Press, 2016)
  
• ed., Peggy of the Flint Hills: A Memoir by Zula Bennington Greene (The Woodley Press 2012)
  
• Mommy Daddy Evan Sage (The Waywiser Press, 2011)
  
• Potscrubber Lullabies (The Waywiser Press, 2006)

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"Rats!" said Sage, whose magic marker
refused to color any darker.
"Uh-oh. I think I hear them comin',"
I said. "Be careful what you summon.
Rats are responsive. If you call
too loudly you might get them all.
Are you prepared to deal with that?"
She scratched her head. "I guess not. Rat."
---From Mommy Daddy Evan Sage

A poem by Eric McHenry on Slate's website

A poem by Eric McHenry on Slate's website

I was unprepared . . . for the small masterpiece that follows this introduction. In the summer of 2009 I sat down with the manuscript and my red grading pen, which I ended up using mainly to put exclamation points in the margins. Peggy had a preternatural memory, and could call back every hue and texture of her childhood in the Ozark foothills and her young adulthood in the Kansas Flint Hills. -from the Introduction of Peggy of the Flint Hills.

Eric McHenry on Poetry Daily.

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Eric McHenry named Poet Laureate of Kansas by the Kansas Humanities Council.

McHenry Interview with Miranda Ericsson. Same Interview as a link.

Eric McHenry on Wikipedia

Eric McHenry and his book, Potscrubber Lullabies on Waywiser Press's website

Eric McHenry on Washburn University's website

Potscrubber Lullabies on Powell's Books' website

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