Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is the Arkansas Poet Laureate, a teacher of poetry, and the author of four poetry collections, including the award-winning Flying Yellow: New and Selected Poems (Paraclete Press, 2021); others are What a Light Thing, This Stone (Sow’s Ear Press, 1999) and two chapbooks, Weather of the House (Sow’s Ear Press, 1995) and Hungry Foxes (Aldrich Press, 2013). She’s also published two books of lyrical prose, Sketches of Home (1998) and A Welcome Shore (2010), both by Canon Press.
She’s a Northwest Arkansas Artists 360 Fellow and grant recipient (2023–24), sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the Walton Foundation, the founder of the Ozark Mountain Poets, the co-founder of the Appalachian Center for Poets and Writers, and a former artist-in-residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her poems have won many prizes, including two nominations for the Pushcart Prize, first place in the Dr. Lily Peters Memorial Award, first place, Richard Lewis Haiku Award, and others.
A native of New York, Suzanne lives in the mountains of Fayetteville, Arkansas. With an MA in poetry from the Writing Seminars of Johns Hopkins University, she has taught literature and writing at several colleges and universities, and teaches virtual poetry workshops through the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. She brought poetry workshops to formerly incarcerated women living and working in a residential program at the Magdalene Serenity House in Fayetteville and has published their creative writing in a book, Today There Have Been Lovely Things. With other local poets, Suzanne visits a memory care center in Fayetteville to offer poetry to Alzheimer’s residents. She has an independent writing and editing business, PR Flair.
Paperback: 52 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (July 24, 2024)