Barrett Warner

Warner’s debut collection of poems, Why Is It so Hard to Kill You? was published in February, 2016 by Somondoco Press in Hagerstown, MD. Ed Ochester, editor of Pitt Poetry Series, has said “Barrett Warner’s poems are characteristically a mixture of the Marx Brothers, Russell Edson and James Tate, with touches of Dorothy Parker and H.P. Lovecraft-which is to say they really aren’t like anyone else’s. I think they’re terrific fun to read and, for such entertainments, wise about both heart and head.”

Currently, Warner is the general editor for Free State Review, a biannual literary journal founded in 2012. It is published in print and features Drama, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry.

In 1990, the Tropos Press in Baltimore, MD, published a chapbook of Warner’s poems entitled ‘Til I’m Blue in the Face. His next chapbook collection appeared in 2014, My Friend Ken Harvey, which was published by the Atlanta-based Publishing Genius Press.

Warner was born in Carroll Hospital in Westminster, Maryland. His interest in journey-to-the-edge writing began after reading The Magical Monarch of Mo by L. Frank Baum. He earned a B.A. in English and American Studies from the College of William and Mary, where he was awarded the G. Glenwood Clark Poetry Prize as well as the Thomas Jefferson Prize in Linguistics for his work on Sir Thomas Morton’s use of adjectives and nouns in 17th century frontier writing. After college, he was a finalist for a Wallace Stegner fellowship at Stanford University, but he moved into his grandmother’s Buick and lived on the road. Warner began to publish poetry and fiction in 1981 and spent several years as a freelance writer focusing on personal essays, stock car racing, motorcycle and horse racing. In 1994, he shifted primarily to writing poetry and received a M.F.A in poetry from Bennington College.

Barrett Warner (born April 1, 1962) is an American short story writer, poet, essayist, critic, and editor. The author of Until I’m Blue in the Face (1990), My Friend Ken Harvey (2014), and Why Is It So Hard to Kill You? (2016), his work has appeared in numerous literary journals and zines. He is a recipient of the Salamander fiction prize, the Tucson Festival of Books essay prize, and the Liam Rector, Chris Toll Memorial Chapbook, Cloudbank, and Princemere poetry prizes. In 2016, in recognition of his Maryland farm essays, he received an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. He used the grant to finance his move to South Carolina. Since 1983, he has been a genre editor for several literary magazines including William and Mary Review, Blood Lotus, Whomanwarp, and Free State Review. He currently serves as general editor of Free State Review as well as acquisitions editor for its publisher, Galileo Books, Ltd. He is married to author and poet Julia Wendell.