Adam Tavel was born in Clinton, Maryland and earned degrees from Lebanon Valley College, The University of Toledo, and The Vermont College of Fine Arts. He recently won the 2017 Richard Wilbur Award for his third poetry collection, Catafalque, which will be published by the University of Evansville Press this winter. Catafalque was previously named a finalist for the Diode Editions Book Award, a semi-finalist for The Word Works’ Tenth Gate Prize, and a distinguished mention for the July 2016 open reading period at Tupelo Press.
His other books include The Fawn Abyss, recently published by Salmon Poetry, and Plash & Levitation, published by The University of Alaska Press in 2015 as winner of the Permafrost Book Prize in Poetry. The recipient of the 2010 Robert Frost Award from the Robert Frost Foundation, Tavel is also the author of the chapbook Red Flag Up (Kattywompus, 2013). He is a professor of English at Wor-Wic Community College on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Tavel’s poems appear in several anthologies: Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (Salmon Poetry, 2010), A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (University of Akron Press, 2012), For Rhino in a Shrinking World: An International Anthology of Poetry (The Poets’ Printery, 2013), Manifest West: Even Cowboys Carry Cell Phones (Western Press Books/University Press of Colorado, 2013), The Waiting Room Reader, Volume II: Words to Keep You Company (CavanKerry Press, 2013), Even The Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry (Salmon Poetry, 2016), The Plume Anthology of Poetry, 4th Edition (MadHat Press, 2016), and The Plume Anthology of Poetry, 5th Edition (MadHat Press, 2017).
From 2005-2014, Tavel served as poetry editor for the journal Conte. In April 2013, he was the featured guest editor for a special poetry issue of Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. He currently serves as the reviews editor for Plume.
You can learn more about Adam Tavel by reading his interview with Rappahannock Review, his interview with The William & Mary Review, his interview with The Fourth River, his article in The Delmarva Daily Times, his article in Lebanon Valley College’s Valley News, or his feature in the September 2015 issue of Plume. You can follow him on Twitter at @fawnabyss.
