Meet the Faculty

Dr. Sara Ryan is an assistant professor in the English Department at Virginia Wesleyan University, focusing on poetry, creative, digital, and professional writing. She has a PhD in English and Literature from Texas Tech University, and a MFA in Poetry from Northern Michigan University. Her primary research includes poetic forms, hybrid writing, image/text literature, digital writing, and the lyric essay. Her first chapbook, Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned, was published by Porkbelly Press in 2018. Her second chapbook, winner of The Cupboard Pamphlet's Annual Chapbook Contest, entitled Excellent Evidence of Human Activity, was published by The Cupboard Pamphlet in 2019. She was the winner of Grist Journal's 2018 Pro Forma Contest and Cutbank's Big Sky, Small Prose Contest. Her first full-length collection, I Thought There Would Be More Wolves, won the 2020 Permafrost Poetry Book Award and was published by University of Alaska Press in 2021. Her poetry and essays have been published in various nationally recognized publications such as Kenyon Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Brevity, DIAGRAM, Thrush Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, and others. She is currently working on and submitting three manuscripts, a book-length essay entitled Little Griefs, a book-length hybrid and visual poem entitled Instructions for Viewing, and a second poetry collection, Verge. She lives in downtown Norfolk, Virginia, with her black bobtail cat.