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James Harms was born in 1960 in Pasadena, California, where he lived for most of the first twenty-five years of his life. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Redlands then received an M.F.A. from Indiana University. He has taught at Denison University, East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania and West Virginia University, where he is currently Professor of English and director of the creative writing program.

His first book of poems, Modern Ocean, was published in 1992 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. He was awarded the PEN/Revson Fellowship for his second book, The Joy Addict, also published by Carnegie Mellon University Press (1998). A letterpress, limited edition book of poems, East of Avalon, was issued by Caddis Case Press in 2000, and a third full-length collection, Quarters, appeared in 2001 (Carnegie Mellon UP).

His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, The North American Review, The New England Review, The Antioch Review, The Gettysburg Review, Oxford American, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Chicago Review, The Missouri Review, Denver Quarterly, Verse and many other literary magazines. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the John Ciardi Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, two Pushcart Prizes, Fellowships in Creative Writing from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Academy of American Poets Prize, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. In 1999, he was named both Outstanding Teacher and Outstanding Researcher by the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University (he received the Outstanding Researcher Award again in 2004), as well as the WVU Foundation Outstanding Teacher. He was also the 1999 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching/CASE United States Professor of the Year for West Virginia, and recipient of the Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award for 1999-2000 from West Virginia University.

His fourth full-length book, Freeways and Aqueducts, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2004; a fifth book, After West, appeared in 2007. He lives with his son and daughter in Morgantown, West Virginia.

More Recently, James Harms was published in The Laurel Review's all poetry issue and he also published his sixth book After West (2008) from Carnegie Mellon University Press. His second collection, The Joy Addict, for which he received the PEN/Revson Fellowship, will be reprinted this year in Carnegie Mellon's Classic Contemporaries Series. A recipient of an NEA Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, he's a professor of English at West Virginia University, where he was the founding director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. He also directs the low-residency MFA Program in Poetry at New England College.

References

The Laurel Review Volume 43, Issue 1

Today in Literature (http://www.todayinliterature.com/contributors/james.harms.asp)