​Biography

 
Eric Pankey, who received his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1983, is the author of many collections of poems: For the New Year (Atheneum 1984), which was selected as the winner of the Walt Whitman Award by Mark Strand, Heartwood (Atheneum 1988), which was reissued by Orchises Press in 1998,  Apocrypha (Alfred A. Knopf 1991), The Late Romances (Alfred A. Knopf 1997), Cenotaph (Alfred A. Knopf 2000), Oracle Figures (Ausable Press 2003), Reliquaries (Ausable Press 2005), The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems (Ausable Press 2008), Trace (Milkweed Editions 2013), Dismantling the Angel (Free Verse Editions 2013), which won the New Measures Prize, Crow-Work (Milkweed Editions 2015), Augury (Milkweed Editions 2017), Owl of Minerva (Milkweed Editions 2019), Alias: Prose Poems (Free Verse Editions 2020), Not Yet Transfigured (Orison Books 2021), The History of the Siege (Codhill Press 2024).  A collection of essays, Vestiges: Notes, Responses, & Essays 1988-2018  appeared from Parlor Press in 2019.

His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in such journals as The Iowa Review, The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review,The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Yale Review. His work has been supported by fellowships from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Brown Foundation. 

Pankey is as well a visual artist.  He began showing his work in national juried group shows in 2008. His work has appeared in shows at the Clara M. Eagle Gallery at Murray State Kentucky University, The Beauchamp's Gallery in Topeka, Kansas, The Arkell Museum in Cobleskills, New York, The Northwest Cultural Council in Barrington, Illinois, The Bowling Green State University Fine Arts Center in Ohio, the 123 Gallery at George Mason University, The Mitchell Gallery at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and the Olly Olly Art Space in Fairfax, Virginia.
 
He teaches poetry workshops and courses on modern and contemporary poetry. He is Professor of English and the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University.  He lives with his wife, the poet Jennifer Atkinson, in Fairfax, Virginia.