bio

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Christopher Kempf is the author of the poetry collections What Though the Field Be Lost (LSU, 2021) and Late in the Empire of Men (Four Way, 2017).  His scholarly book, Craft Class: The Writing Workshop in American Culture, was published in 2022 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Recipient of a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Award, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, his poetry and literary nonfiction have appeared in Best American Poetry (2020), Boston Review, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New Republic, and PEN America, among others.  His scholarship appears in American Literary History (ALH), English Literary History (ELH), and Modernism/modernity.

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Kempf received his MFA from Cornell University, and holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Chicago.  He is an associate professor in the MFA program at the University of Illinois, where he is also a Center for Advanced Study Fellow.  

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Kempf is represented by Jamie Carr at The Book Group.