HOPE COULTER’s writing has appeared in The Yale Review, Southwest Review, Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Terrain, and other journals. Her book of short stories, Rumors of Peace, is forthcoming in 2026 from Cornerstone Press, and her poetry collection The Wheel of Light was published in 2015 as part of the New Poets Series of BrickHouse Books.

Awards for her writing include the Laman Library Writers Fellowship, the Porter Prize for Literary Excellence, and two Meringoff Writing Awards from the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers: poetry in 2022 and nonfiction in 2023.

Hope was born in New Orleans and grew up in the central Louisiana city of Alexandria, attending public schools. She earned her AB in English from Harvard University and her MFA in fiction and poetry from Queens University of Charlotte. She is retired with emerita status from Hendrix College, where for many years she taught English and creative writing and directed the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language. Hope and her husband, the nature and travel writer Mel White, live in Little Rock with their yellow lab mix, Josie.