Rachel Mennies

Rachel Mennies is the author of the poetry collections The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021); The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (Texas Tech University Press, 2014), winner of the 2014 Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award; and the chapbook No Silence in the Fields (Blue Hour Press, 2012). Her poetry has been published in The Believer, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Jewish Currents, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Mennies’s essays, criticism, and other articles have been published in The Millions, LitHub, on the Poetry Foundation website, and in other outlets.

Mennies took over for Robert Fink in 2016 as the series editor of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry; she also serves as a poetry and reviews editor for AGNI. Alongside the poet Ruth Awad, she edited the anthology The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry (Sundress Publications, 2020). She served as the 2021-2022 Walton Visiting Writer in Poetry for the University of Arkansas MFA Program in Creative Writing and Translation. 

As an adjunct professor, Mennies has taught creative writing, rhetoric/composition, professional writing, and writing pedagogy at Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham University, Penn State University, and Loyola University Chicago. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.