Hope Coulter

Hope Coulter is a fiction writer and poet whose work has appeared in such journals as North American Review, The Carolina Quarterly, and Rattle. She recently won second place in Southwest Review’s Morton Marr poetry contest and last year was a semifinalist for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award as well as a finalist for the North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize. Other honors include a Pushcart nomination, Arkansas’s Porter Prize for Literary Excellence, and the Short Story Award of Louisiana Life magazine.

Hope was born in New Orleans and spent her early childhood in Little Rock before moving at age five to Alexandria, Louisiana, where she attended public schools. She received her A.B. from Harvard and her M.F.A. from Queens University of Charlotte. Her first two novels—The Errand of the Eye and Dry Bones—were published in 1988 and 1990 by August House Publishers, and her children’s picture book, Uncle Chuck’s Truck, came out in 1993 from Bradbury Press.

Since 1993 Hope has taught creative writing at Hendrix College, where she currently serves as Director of the Hendrix-Murphy Programs in Literature & Language. She lives in Little Rock with her husband, the writer Mel White.

Hope accepts the $10,000 Laman Library Writers Fellowship, Jan. 10, 2014.--l-r: John Deering, editorial cartoonist, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Dan Noble, public relations manager, Laman Library; Jeff Baskin, director, Laman Library