Professor
Phone: (901) 678-3318
Email: jbensko@memphis.edu
Office: Patterson 401

Education

B.A., 1973, University of Alabama
M.F.A., 1979, University of Alabama
Ph.D., 1985, Florida State University

Academic Summary

Dr. John Bensko has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in 20th century poetry and narrative technique from Florida State University. Before coming to the University of Memphis, he taught at the University of Alabama, Old Dominion University, Rhodes College, and as a Fulbright Professor in American Literature at The Universidad de Alicante, Spain. Dr. Bensko won the McLeod-Grobe Poetry Prize for 2000. He has served as the Director of the River City Writers Series and currently directs the Creative Writing study abroad program in Alicante, Spain.

Select Publications

Books of poetry

• Green Soldiers. Yale University Press, 1981. (Winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.)
• The Waterman's Children. University of Massachusetts Press, 1994.
• The Iron City. University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Poems have been included in the following publications

• The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry
• A New Geography of Poets
• The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets

Short fiction collection

• Sea Dogs. Graywolf Press, 2004.

His fiction has appeared in many journals, including Chelsea, The Georgia Review, The Greensboro Review, The Madison Review, The New England Review, Quarterly West, The Sonora Review, The Southern Review, and TriQuarterly.