a b o u t
Dean Rader has published widely in the fields of poetry, American Indian studies, and popular culture. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize, judged by Claudia Keelan. It was a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial Award for a First Book of Poems and it won the 2010 Writer's League of Texas Poetry Prize. A poem from the book, "Twilight at Ocean Beach: 14," was named by Verse Daily as one of the Best Poems of 2010, and others have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Last year he was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Louis Hammer Award judged by David Lehman, and this year one of his poems was selected by Mark Doty for Best American Poetry, 2012.
In 2009, Kelly Cherry selected his poem “Hesiod in Oklahoma, 1934” for the prestigious Sow's Ear Review Prize and in 2008, his poem "Frog Loses Sleep Puzzling Over Parallel Universes" won the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. Other poems have appeared or will appear in Cincinnati Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Quarterly West, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Salamander, POOL, Connecticut Review, Zyzzyva, New American Writing, Volt, Boston Review, and many others.
His newest scholarly book, Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI was published in April 2011 from the University of Texas Press. It is the first book to look at recent Native American art, literature, and film and focuses on the work of figures like Sherman Alexie, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Louise Erdrich, Chris Eyre, Edgar Heap of Birds, David Treuer, Joy Harjo, and LeAnne Howe. Engaged Resistance has been nominated for a PROSE Award.
Rader is also the co-author of a best-selling textbook on writing and popular culture, The World is a Text (with Jonathan Silverman), which just went into its fourth edition. With poet Janice Gould, he co-edited Speak To Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2003), the first collection of essays devoted to Native American poetry. Most recently, he curated a special issue of Sentence that focused on recent American Indian prose poetry.
Rader has served on the editorial board for Studies in American Indian Literatures and is currently on the editorial staff of DMQ Review. A former executive committee member of the Commonwealth Club's Inforum, Rader now serves on the poetry jury of the California Book Awards. He reviews poetry regularly for The Rumpus and The San Francisco Chronicle, where he also writes a regular column for the City Brights Section. His series of columns about the 10 Greatest Poets was covered by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and dozens of other media outlets. He recently began writing for the Huffington Post. He also recently began a blog called 99 Poems for the 99 Percent that features 99 poems over 99 days.
Rader holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton and is a professor of English at the University of San Francisco, where he won the 2010-2011 Distinguished Research Award.
A Native of Western Oklahoma, Rader lives in San Francisco with his wife Jill and their son Gavin.
In 2009, Kelly Cherry selected his poem “Hesiod in Oklahoma, 1934” for the prestigious Sow's Ear Review Prize and in 2008, his poem "Frog Loses Sleep Puzzling Over Parallel Universes" won the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. Other poems have appeared or will appear in Cincinnati Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Quarterly West, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Salamander, POOL, Connecticut Review, Zyzzyva, New American Writing, Volt, Boston Review, and many others.
His newest scholarly book, Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI was published in April 2011 from the University of Texas Press. It is the first book to look at recent Native American art, literature, and film and focuses on the work of figures like Sherman Alexie, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Louise Erdrich, Chris Eyre, Edgar Heap of Birds, David Treuer, Joy Harjo, and LeAnne Howe. Engaged Resistance has been nominated for a PROSE Award.
Rader is also the co-author of a best-selling textbook on writing and popular culture, The World is a Text (with Jonathan Silverman), which just went into its fourth edition. With poet Janice Gould, he co-edited Speak To Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2003), the first collection of essays devoted to Native American poetry. Most recently, he curated a special issue of Sentence that focused on recent American Indian prose poetry.
Rader has served on the editorial board for Studies in American Indian Literatures and is currently on the editorial staff of DMQ Review. A former executive committee member of the Commonwealth Club's Inforum, Rader now serves on the poetry jury of the California Book Awards. He reviews poetry regularly for The Rumpus and The San Francisco Chronicle, where he also writes a regular column for the City Brights Section. His series of columns about the 10 Greatest Poets was covered by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and dozens of other media outlets. He recently began writing for the Huffington Post. He also recently began a blog called 99 Poems for the 99 Percent that features 99 poems over 99 days.
Rader holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton and is a professor of English at the University of San Francisco, where he won the 2010-2011 Distinguished Research Award.
A Native of Western Oklahoma, Rader lives in San Francisco with his wife Jill and their son Gavin.
