Terrance Hayes

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Terrance Hayes earned a BA at Coker College and an MFA at the University of Pittsburgh. In his poems, in which he occasionally invents formal constraints, Hayes considers themes of popular culture, race, music, and masculinity. In a 2013 interview with Lauren Russell for Hot Metal Bridge, Hayes stated, 

I’m chasing a kind of language that can be unburdened by people’s expectations. I think music is the primary model—how close can you get this language to be like music and communicate feeling at the base level in the same way a composition with no words communicates meaning? It might be impossible. Language is always burdened by thought. I’m just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.

Hayes’s poetry collections include So to Speak (Penguin Books, 2023); American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books, 2018), a finalist for the National Book Award; How to Be Drawn (2015), a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award; Lighthead (Penguin Books, 2010), winner of the National Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Wind in a Box (Penguin Books, 2006), a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Hip Logic (Penguin Books, 2002), winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for the LA Times Book Award and the Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award; and Muscular Music (Tia Chucha Press, 1999), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His poems have been featured in several editions of Best American Poetry and have won multiple Pushcart Prizes. 

Hayes is also the author of Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry (Penguin Books, 2023), a finalist for the 2024 Pegasus Award for Criticism, and To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight (Wave Books, 2018), winner of the 2019 Pegasus Award in Poetry Criticism.

Hayes’s honors include a Whiting Award and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Pittsburgh. Hayes is currently professor of creative writing at New York University.