About
David Rivard was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. He is the author of seven books of poetry: Some of You Will Know (Arrowsmith Press); Standoff (Graywolf Press), awarded the 2017 PEN/New England Prize in poetry; Otherwise Elsewhere (Graywolf Press); Sugartown (Graywolf Press); Bewitched Playground (Graywolf Press); Wise Poison (Graywolf Press), winner of the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1996 and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; and Torque (University of Pittsburgh Press), winner of the 1987 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize.
His poems and essays appear in the American Poetry Review, Plume, Ploughshares, The Brooklyn Rail, Poets.org's Poem-a-Day, Poetry, and other literary magazines, as well as in anthologies such as The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Best American Poetry, and The Bread Loaf Book of Contemporary American Poetry. He has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Massachusetts Arts Council, among others. He was twice awarded the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from The American Poetry Review, and he has also been given the Celia B. Wagner Award by the Poetry Society of America.
David Rivard has been a professor of poetry for over 30 years. He currently teaches in the University of New Hampshire MFA Program in Writing. In 2006, he was awarded the O.B. Hardison Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library in recognition of both his writing and teaching. He taught previously at Tufts University, in the MFA Program at Vermont College, the Sarah Lawrence College MFA program, and at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.
Additionally, he serves on the writing committee of the Fine Arts Work Center and the board of Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire.
He currently lives in coastal Maine.