Poetry in the Woods
Faculty
Learn more about the faculty below.
PITW Faculty 2025.
Traci Brimhall
Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing at Kansas State University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon, 2024). Her poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Nation, Orion, The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Park Service, the Academy of American Poets, and Purdue Library’s Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart. She’s the currently the poet-in-residence at the Guggenheim museum and poet laureate for the State of Kansas.
Eduardo Corral
Eduardo C. Corral is the son of Mexican immigrants. Graywolf Press published his second book, Guillotine, in 2020. His first book, Slow Lightning, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. His poems have appeared in Ambit, New England Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and Poetry. He's the recipient of residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and Civitella Ranieri. He's also the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Hodder Fellowship and the National Holmes Poetry Prize, both from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Washington University. He lives in St. Louis.
Jason Vasser-Elong
​Jason Vasser-Elong, the author of Shrimp (2Leaf Press, 2018), a collection of poetry that
examines identity in a post-colonial context. He newest collection Lavendar is forthcoming this
year. He has been featured in documentaries, “Poetry in Motion: St. Louis Poets Take the Mic”
and “Never been a Time” performing poetry, and was recently featured in “Verse and Voice: The
Podcast.” In September, Jason will participate in Poetry in Motion: St. Louis Poets Take the
Mic… LIVE at the High Low Listening Room. He holds a degree in anthropology, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing with an emphasis
in poetry and is a doctor of education.
Adam Vines
Adam Vines has published poetry in The Southern Review, Poetry, Southwest Review, The Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Barrow Street, The Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, The Literary Review, Five Points, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, and others. He is the author of three single-authored books of poetry — Lures (LSU Press, 2022), Out of Speech (LSU, 2018), and The Coal Life (University of Arkansas Press, 2012) — and two collaborative poetry collections written with Allen Jih, Day Kink (Unicorn Press, 2018) and According to Discretion (Unicorn Press, 2015). Vines directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Alabama Birmingham and he is editor of Birmingham Poetry Review.
Andrea Scarpino
Andrea Scarpino has published the poetry collections Once Upon Wing Lake, What the Willow Said as it Fell, and Once, Then, and the co-edited anthology Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice. She received a PhD in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, and an MFA from The Ohio State University. She is also co-editor of Nine Mile Magazine and served as Poet Laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula 2015-2017. She teaches at St Louis University High School.
Clayton Adam Clark
Clayton Adam Clark lives in Saint Louis, his hometown, where he works as a mental health counselor in private practice alongside his wife, Tina, and their therapy dog, Tank. His latest poetry collection, Auscultate, was published by Galileo Press in 2025, and his debut poetry collection, A Finitude of Skin, won the 2017 Moon City Poetry Award (Moon City Press, 2018). His honors include an Artist Support Grant from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. He earned the MFA in creative writing at Ohio State University and both a master’s in communication and a master’s in clinical mental health counseling at University of Missouri-St. Louis.
PITW Program Coordinator.
Travis Mossotti
Travis Mossotti's three previous collections are About the Dead, Field Study, and Narcissus Americana. His fourth collection, Racecar Jesus, won the Christopher Smart-Joan Alice Poetry Prize and was highly commended for the Forward Prize (Black Spring Press Group UK, 2023). Mossotti's fifth collection, Apocryphal Genesis, won the Alma Book Award and the 2025 North American Poetry Book Award (Saturnalia Books, 2024). He recently won the 2023 Wales Poetry Award, and he currently serves as a Biodiversity Fellow for the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University. He lives and works in St. Louis.
PITW Program Administrators.
Erin Quick
Erin Quick has served at Executive Director at Saint Louis Poetry Center since 2016 and has served as a Program Administrator for Poetry in the Woods since 2023.
Lindsay Mossotti
Lindsay Mossotti is Contract and Grant Administrator in the Biology Department at Washington University and a graduate of Webster University with a degree in Creative Writing (poetry).
PITW Past & Present Faculty.
Past and Present Faculty and Faculty Observers include: Kerry James Evans, Eduardo Corral, Andrea Scarpino, James Crews, Naomi Shihab Nye, Adam Vines, James Kimbrell, Traci Brimhall, Devin Johnston, Rita Chapman, Elizabeth Hoover, Shane Seely, Travis Mossotti, Amie Whittemore, Jason Vasser-Elong, and Clayton Adam Clark. Faculty roster rotates each year, and includes a wide array of local and visiting poets.