Ed Madden
LITERARY ARTS EDITOR
He never dipped or chewed tobacco, he took his camera duck hunting instead of a gun, and the cowboy boots he chose to wear in junior high were a lovely oxblood purple. By the time he joined French club instead of Future Farmers of America, Ed Madden’s parents probably figured it unlikely he’d stay on the farm. Madden received his BA in French and English from Harding University in Arkansas, his MA and PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Along the way, he also received a BS in Biblical studies from the Institute for Christian Studies—which really just means he can (sometimes) quote the Bible better than his students. Both a scholar and a poet, Madden is an associate professor of English and interim director of Women’s & Gender Studies at USC. He is the author of a study of modernist literature, Tiresian Poetics, as well as three books of poetry—Signals, which won the 2007 SC Poetry Book Prize; Prodigal: Variations; and Nest (forthcoming). He’s at work on a fourth book, Ark, focused on the last few months of his father’s living with cancer. He is also the co-editor of Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio, which has just been selected as the first-year common reading text for USC-Upstate. His poems appear in Best New Poets 2007 and The Book of Irish American Poetry, and elsewhere. He joined Jasper as literary arts editor to draw attention to the really fine writers in and from the Midlands and to give promising new writers a forum. He lives with his partner of 18 years, Bert Easter, in Columbia.
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