Ed Madden is a professor of English at the University of South Carolina. He served as poet laureate for the City of Columbia, SC, 2015-2022. He is the author of six books of poetry, most recently A pooka in Arkansas, selected by Timothy Liu for the Hilary Tham book prize, and A story of the city, a collection of poems written during his two terms as Columbia’s poet laureate, both books published in 2023. He is recipient of a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and an artist residency at the Instituto Sacatar in Itaparica, Brazil.