William Olsen

Dr. William Olsen is a professor of English at Western Michigan University.

Olsen teaches creative writing and literature courses at the graduate and undergraduate level. He is the author of five collections of poetry, The Hand of God and a Few Bright Flowers (Illinois, Carnegie Mellon Classic), as well as Vision of a Storm Cloud, Trouble Lights, Avenue of Vanishing (Triquarterly, 2007), and Sand Theory, all from Triquartely/Northwestern.

He is co-editor, with Sharon Bryan, of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life (Sarabande). Along with Jack Ridl, he editedPoets In Michigan/Michigan In POetry. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, A Nation “Discovery” Award, The Texas Institute of Arts Award, a Breadloaf Fellowship and poetry awards from Poetry Northwest and Crazyhorse. His poems and essays have appeared in The New Republic, Georgia Review, Chicago Review, New American Poets of the Nineties, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Poets of the New Century, and many other magazines and anthologies.  He is editor of New Issues Poetry and Prose.