Ralph Culver

Ralph Culver was born in Champaign, Illinois in 1952 and grew up in Pittsburgh. Since 1970, apart from a year or two in New York City, he has lived in Vermont. He studied creative writing and literature at Goddard College (Vermont), the New School (New York City), and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (North Carolina), and filmmaking at the University of Vermont. His poetry, fiction, and criticism have appeared in many publications, and he is a past grantee in poetry of the Vermont Arts Council among other awards and citations. In 2012, he received the Anabiosis Press Chapbook Prize for his collection Both Distances (Anabiosis Press, 2013), which was followed by the highly praised So Be It (WolfGang Press) in 2018. His latest collection of poems, A Passable Man (MadHat Press, 2021), was an Editor's Pick by BookLife Reviews of Publishers Weekly, and received rave notices from, among others, Kirkus Reviews, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The High Window (UK), and Nina MacLaughlin in The Boston Globe, who wrote "These are physical poems, attuned to natural rhythms and those rhythms' effects on spirit and body both. ...Quiet wisdom, which is the best kind of wisdom, lives in his lines." Culver is a popular lecturer and reader of his work, and has given many poetry readings in public spaces over the years. He is owner and principal of Letter-perfect Writing and Editorial Services, working with commercial businesses and nonprofits throughout North America on their writing needs.