Michael Simms

Michael Simms is an American poet and literary publisher. His most recent book is American Ash (Ragged Sky Press 2020). His poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including 5 A.M., Poetry Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Southwest Review, and West Branch. His poems have also been read by Garrison Keillor on the nationally syndicated radio show The Writer's Almanac. Born in 1954 in Houston, Texas, Simms attended the School of Irish Studies in Dublin, Ireland; Southern Methodist University (BA, 1976); and the University of Iowa (MFA, 1978).

"Michael Simms lays bare his personal history in American Ash with formidable honesty and direct speech, testifying with “a cold eye” to both the heuristic and cathartic power of poetry. In speech that’s direct, lyrical, spontaneous, raw, and expansive, Simms braves a wide array of subjects that range from his sister’s suicide, the 1982 El Calabozo massacre in El Salvador, a Vietnam vet’s memory of a slaughter of innocents, and the demise of the American Ash, to mention only a few. And there are ecstatic poems as well in which such immense particulars as the marriage bed, evening, Simms’ robust son, and the hummingbird betray a heroic magnanimity. With a beat-like voice that’s spontaneous, raw, and irrepressible, Simms writes with the courage of a witness and the wisdom of a survivor. These poems leap, lament, pierce, transcend, delve, witness, praise, and testify to the curative power of poetry."

Simms has won many fellowships, grants and awards for his work, including a 2011 Certificate of Recognition from the Pennsylvania Legislature for his contribution to the arts. In addition to his literary career, Simms has written and published on health, nutrition and the environment, having earned a certificate in plant-based nutrition from Cornell University (2015). From 1979-1987 he served on the faculty of Southern Methodist University and from 2005-2013 in the Chatham University Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing.

Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2003. PEN (Permanent Entry Number): 0000149473.

In 1998, Simms founded the literary publisher Autumn House Press in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he served as Editor-in-Chief until 2016. He has been the lead editor on over 100 full-length books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by authors such as Gerald Stern, Ed Ochester, Martha Rhodes, Jo McDougall, Chana Bloch, Samuel Ligon, Samuel Hazo, Sue Ellen Thompson, Frank Gaspar, Sheryl St. Germain, Judith Vollmer, Steven Schwartz, and Richard Jackson, as well as ten anthologies of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. His edited volumes have been reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, The London Times Literary Supplement, The Jerusalem Post, American Poetry Review, and many other periodicals. Simms is the founder of the online literary magazine Coal Hill Review and the publisher of the political magazine Vox Populi. Simms lives with his wife Eva, a psychologist, and their two children in the historic neighborhood of Mount Washington overlooking the city of Pittsburgh.