Photographs by @yungpainkiller
Travis Sharp is the author of the lyric documentary poem sequence Monoculture (Unicorn Press 2024) and the poetry collection Yes, I am a corpse flower (Knife Fork Book 2021). A former postdoctoral fellow at the University at Buffalo, he is currently a lecturer in the writing program at Howard University. Since 2019, he is the executive editor at Essay Press.
His previous publications include a chapbook, Sinister Queer Agenda, published by above/ground press in 2018, and a co-edited anthology of essays in response to the 2016 US Presidential election, Radio: 11.8.16, co-edited with Aimee Harrison and Maria Anderson, and published by Essay Press in 2017. He has also published a number of book objects, artist's books, and experimental chapbooks, including one plus one is two ones (Recreational Resources, 2018), The Cargo Pants Pocket Anthology of Peer Reviewed Articles (Letter [r] Press, 2017), Small Po_tions (Letter [r] Press, 2016), and FEARHEAR GESTHARE URESHARM HEREHIRE (aether inK, 2015), among others.
He has an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington, Bothell, as well as a PhD in English from the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo.
During his MFA, he collaborated with colleagues Aimee Harrison, LB Burgher, Sarah Baker, Lynarra Featherly, Tracy Gregory, and Breka Blakeslee, founding the journal Small Po[r]tions and the editorial collective Letter [r] Press. With Meagan Wilson, he also curated the Plantable Chapbooks series of poetry chapbooks that are letterpress printed on paper embedded with seeds, which are designed to be planted after being read, sprouting into a variety of wildflowers.
He has taught classes on poetry, fiction, and USAmerican literature from 1865-present, as well as on activist writing and writing for non-profits, professional writing, and introductory courses on writing and rhetoric. At UWB, he co-taught a year-long course series with health sciences professor Andrea Stone in which students edited and peer reviewed a journal of undergraduate and graduate student scholarship, resulting in the ongoing publication The CROW: Campus Research and Observational Writings.
In addition to teaching both introductory and advanced undergraduate writing workshops in creative writing, he also is a teaching artist at the Just Buffalo Writing Center in downtown Buffalo, an arts non-profit dedicated to providing free workshops to youth and teenagers. For one of these workshops, he collaborated with UB Poetics Program Director Judith Goldman, the Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper, and Just Buffalo to stage a months-long workshop series on plastic waste, ecopoetics, and environmental racism and injustice, culminating in a public performance of student poetry at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo.