Stephen Roger Powers

Go

Stephen Roger Powers was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Several summer trips to Arizona and Tennessee during his childhood planted early seeds of wanderlust. His first trip abroad to Germany with his high school German club in 1990 solidified his love of language and of always searching for a new place to call a home away from home.

At the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and German, with a minor in French. Even today Stephen considers himself a polyglot. He listens to German and French podcasts daily, and continues his informal study of Japanese and Spanish.

Laugh

While completing his PhD in English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Stephen worked weekends at clubs and casinos around the Midwest honing a stand-up comedy act about his hearing loss. He would often spend his nights after coming off stage writing poetry because he was too energized to sleep.

Write

Stephen has published four book-length collections of his poems with Salmon Poetry in Ireland. His latest, Hail My Attention Kindly, was published in February 2024. Highway Speed, Stephen’s first collection of short stories, was published by Closet Skeleton Press in October 2019. His writing has appeared in over a hundred journals and anthologies, including 32 Poems, Copper Nickel, Eureka Literary Magazine, Natural Bridge, Shenandoah, Smartish Pace, The Woody Creeker, Rabbit Ears: TV Poems, and Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology.