Kevin Bowen

Kevin Bowen

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Kevin Bowen is a poet, translator, and director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He grew up in Boston’s West End, served in Vietnam in 1968-1969, received his BA from the University of Massachusetts Boston, his Ph.D. from SUNY Buffalo where he was a Danforth Fellow, and was a Fulbright Fellow at New College, Oxford. He is the author of three collections of poetry: Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong, Forms of Prayer at the Hotel Edison, and most recently Eight True Maps of the West. He has co-edited several anthologies of prose and poetry, including: Writing Between the Lines: An Anthology on War and its Consequences, Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, Distant Road: Selected Poems of Nguyen Duy, Six Vietnamese Poets, and Early Zen Poems from Vietnam, He has acted as guest editor for several special issues of Boston Review, Manoa and Cyphers on poetry from Vietnam. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, fellowships in Poetry and Fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a poetry fellowship from the National Foundation for the Arts, he lives in Dedham with his wife and two children and spends time in Ireland where he owns a home in Achill Island.

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