Han VanderHart

Han VanderHart is a queer, Southern writer who grew up in rural Virginia and now lives in Durham, North Carolina. Their manuscript Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025) was selected by Chanda Feldman as the recipient of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Han is also the author of the poetry chapbooks Hawk & Moon (Bottlecap Press, 2025), Hands like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019), and the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021). They hold an MFA in poetry from George Mason University and an MA in English from Georgetown, where they worked with Carolyn Forché at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. In 2019, Han received their PhD in English from Duke University and defended the dissertation Gender and Collaboration in Seventeenth-Century English Poetry. Han’s poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry Foundation, Poet Lore, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast, edits Moist Poetry Journal, and is the co-founding editor and publisher of the poetry and nonfiction press River River Books alongside Amorak Huey.

Short Bio: Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, NC. They are the author of Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025), winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, the chapbook Hawk & Moon (Bottlecap Press, 2025), and What Pecan Light(Bull City Press, 2021), and have writing is published and forthcoming in Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and, alongside Amorak Huey, co-edits River River Books.