Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets

Applications Include:

• Letter of Application, addressing your commitment to poetry, why you hope to attend, and what you hope to accomplish during the Seminar.
• Poetry Resume (in outline format), which includes poetry- or literary-related activities, involvements, and coursework; involvement in readings or other literary events; and any publications.
• Writing Sample consisting of 8–12 pages of poems, beginning a new page for each poem. (Individual poems may be longer than one page.)
• Unofficial transcript for your most recent institution. (Please note that we DO NOT require an official transcript.)
• Two letters of recommendation from teachers of writing or other writing/literary professionals who are familiar with your poetry, addressing your commitment as a reader and writer of poetry, your presence in a workshop environment, your potential for thriving in a group of peer poets, and your contributions to artistic communities on and beyond campus. 

Please note that applications and recommendations must be submitted via our application portal. We cannot accept applications sent by other means.

Jessica Nirvana Ram

Director

Jessica Nirvana Ram is a poet and educator. Author of Earthly Gods (Game Over Books 2024) and in the aftermath (Fifth Wheel Press 2025), Jessica earned her MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in wildness, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, among others, and has received support from the Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and The Watering Hole. She is the Director of Sticky Fingers at Honey Literary, Director of the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bucknell University. 

Eduardo Corral

Visiting Poet

Eduardo C. Corral is the son of Mexican immigrants. He’s the author of Guillotine, published by Graywolf Press, and Slow Lightning, which won the Yale Younger Poets Competition. He's the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis. 

Iver

Visiting Poet

K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet born in Mississippi. Their debut collection Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco won the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry from Milkweed Editions, selected by Tyehimba Jess. Short Film won the Wisconsin Literary Award and was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library. It was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Lambda Literary Awards. Iver has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry from Florida State University. They are the Writer in Residence at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA.

Mercedes Rodriguez

Program Associate

Mercedes Rodriguez is a poet and educator from Los Angeles, CA. Chosen by Brandon Som as the winner of the Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, their work appears in New England Review, The Georgia Review, Washington Square Review, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, like a field, Bellingham Review, The Los Angeles Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. Their work has received support from Bread Loaf, Millay Arts, the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, and the Charleston Literary Festival’s Cato Fellowship. They hold an MFA from North Carolina State University.