Born and raised in Nashville, poet Evie Shockley earned a B.A. at Northwestern University, a J.D. at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in English literature at Duke University.
The author of several collections of poetry, including "a half-red sea" (2006) and "the new black" (2011), and "semiautomatic" (2017), Shockley is also the author of the critical volume "Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry" (2011). Her poetry and essays have been featured in several anthologies, including "Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry" (2009), "Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook" (2010), A Broken Thing: Contemporary Poets on the Line" (2011), and "Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon" (2013).