Shane McCrae Biography

Shane McCrae (born September 22, 1975) is an American poet. He is the author of the poetry collections The Animal Too Big to Kill (winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award; to be published in September, 2015 by Persea Books), Forgiveness Forgiveness (Factory Hollow Press, 2014), Blood (Noemi Press, 2013), and Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011). McCrae was the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award, and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a PEN Center USA Literary Award. In 2013, McCrae received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2010, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Fence, and AGNI.

Shane McCrae attended the University of Oregon, Linfield College, the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Harvard Law School. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing program at Oberlin College. McCrae also teaches in the brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University.