ABOUT

C.R. Grimmer (they/them) is an award-winning poet, scholar, and digital humanities educator whose work bridges poetry, public scholarship, and literary criticism. They are the author of The Lyme Letters: Poems (Winner of the Walt McDonald First Book Award), the chapbook O–(ezekiel's wife), and the peer-reviewed, OEA, multimedia book Poets as Public Scholars: Activist Poets in an Age of Social Media (forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press). Their poetry has been a finalist for Best New American Poets and their poems, installations, and essay writing appear in leading venues and journals, such the Seattle Convention Center, Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, FENCE Magazine, and The Comparatist.

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Grimmer is the creator and host of The Poetry Vlog (TPV), a digital humanities series featuring poets, artists, and scholars discussing poetry, culture, and media. The project has been supported through several fellowship and grant initiatives, including the Simpson Center Andrew W. Mellon Foundation "Reaching New Publics," The Jack Straw Cultural Center, and The Center for Intersectional Gender Studies.

 

Their academic research explores intersections and coalitions between fields of poetry, literary studies, critical race theory, queer studies, ecocriticism, disability studies, and digital humanities, with work supported by fellowships such as The Harlan Hahn Disability Studies Fellowship and The Project for Interdisciplinary Pedagogy Fellowship. 

 

Grimmer holds a PhD from the University of Washington, where they were a Betty T. Johnson Research Fellow, an MFA and MA from Portland State University, and BA from Oakland University. Grimmer has been invited speaker for Princeton University's "GRADFutures Now" and Utah State University's Lavender Graduation. They have taught in higher education for over 12 years at universities such as Portland State University, The University of Washington, Utah State University, and Seattle University. Currently, they are an Asssistant Professor at Utah State University, where they working on an poetry and art process book tentatively titled, Sapphic Ekphrastics: Transcriptions for Access. 

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Public-facing C.V. selections were updated June 2025 and are available to download. The below website portions were updated in early 2024. Please email for full CV.