Enid Shomer
Current City, State, Country
Birth City, State, Country
Biography
Enid Shomer is the author of five books of poetry and three of fiction, most recently the book of poems Shoreless (Persea Books, 2020) which was the winner of the 2019 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award. Her work has been collected in more than seventy anthologies and textbooks, including POETRY: A Harper Collins Pocket Anthology, Best American Poetry, and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best. In 2013, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the Florida Humanities Council.
Several of her books have been awarded major prizes. Imaginary Men received the Iowa Fiction Prize as well as the LSU/Southern Review Prize. She received the Gold Medal in Fiction from the State of Florida for Tourist Season (Random House, 2007), which was also chosen for Barnes & Noble’s “Discover Great New Writers Series.” Stalking the Florida Panther (The Word Works, 1988) won the Washington Prize. Her anthology, All We Know of Pleasure: Poetic Erotica by Women, won a bronze medal in the IPPY Awards. Other awards include two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, three fellowships from the State of Florida, the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry, the Celia B. Wagner Award of the Poetry Society of America, and more. Shomer also served as the Poetry Editor for University of Arkansas Press for sixteen years.
Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Paris Review, The New Criterion, Kenyon Review, Tikkun, etc. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Modern Maturity, Midstream, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Virginia Quarterly Review, etc. Her poem sequence “Pope Joan,” adapted into a dance oratorio by composer Anne LeBaron and choreographer Mark Taylor, premiered in October of 2000. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in The New Times Book Review, The Women’s Review of Books, Moment, and elsewhere.
Published Works
Poetry
Shoreless (Persea Books, 2020)
All We Know of Pleasure: Poetic Erotica by Women (Carolina Wren/John Blair, 2018)
Driving Through the Animal (chapbook; Upper Rubber Boot Books, 2016)
Stars at Noon: Poems from the Life of Jacqueline Cochran (University of Arkansas Press, 2001)
Black Drum (University of Arkansas Press, 1997)
This Close to Earth (University of Arkansas Press, 1992).
Stalking the Florida Panther (Word Works, 1988)
Florida Postcards (Jubilee Press, 1987)
The Startle Effect (chapbook; American Studies Press, 1983)
Fiction
The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (Simon and Schuster, 2012)
Tourist Season: Stories (Random House, 2007)
Imaginary Men (University of Iowa Press, 1993)
Author Site
Links to Sample Works
Video Reading
Current Title
Education
Wellesley College, B.A. with Honors
University of Miami, M.A.