Catherine Pierce

Major Works

Catherine Pierce – MSU English Department faculty (photo by Megan Bean / Mississippi State University) Used by permission.

• The Tornado Is the World  ( published by Saturnalia Books, 2016)
• The Girls of Peculiar 2012 (2013 winner of Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters’ Poetry Award)
• Famous Last Words 2008 (winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize)
• Animals of Habit (Kent State 2004), winner of the Wick Chapbook Competition

Biography of Catherine Pierce

Catherine Pierce, who grew up in Delaware but now lives in Starkville, Mississippi, is a poet who is currently the co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University’s creative writing program. She has taught classes in both creative writing and Twentieth Century American literature at MSU since 2007. She was the recipient of Mississippi State University’s Arts and Sciences Faculty Teaching Award in the Humanities in 2013.

Pierce began her college education at Susquehanna University in 2000 where she received a B.A. In 2003 she obtained a M.F.A. at Ohio State University, and in 2007 she received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.

The Tornado is the World, 2016

Her poetry books include The Girls of Peculiar, which won the 2013 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters’ Poetry Award; Famous Last Words, which was the 2008 winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; and Animals of Habit, a chapbook published by Kent State in 2004 and the winner of the Wick Chapbook Competition. Her fourth collection of poems, The Tornado Is the World,  will be published by Saturnalia Books in 2016.  The poems in her new book focus on individuals’ responses to a tornado.

Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications that include The Best American Poetry, Slate, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Mississippi Review, and others.

Pierce is married to fiction writer Michael Kardos, and they have two children.  They live in Starkville, Mississippi.

  Related Websites

• Catherine Pierce’s website
• Excerpt from What It Sounds Like by Pierce in Cincinnati Review , Jun 4, 2020
• Pierce’s poem Disaster Work on cover of Copper-Nickel
  

  Michael Kardos, Nancy Jacobs, Nancy Hargrove, Becky Hagenston, and Catherine Pierce after a Starkville Reads presentation.

• Review of The Girls of Peculiar in Cerise Press.
• Review of The Girls of Peculiar in the The Kenyon Review
• Review of The Girls of Peculiar in Diode.
• Interview with Catherine Pierce , includes poems
• Catherine Pierce’s Faculty page at MSU