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Henry Hughes

Professor of English

Professor Hughes teaches a variety of literature and writing courses. In addition to introductory classes in poetry and fiction, and surveys in American literature, his seminars include Japanese and Chinese Literature in Translation, Literature of the American Civil War, American and British Nature Writing, Literature of the Sea, Fishing Across Cultures, Modern and Contemporary Poetry, and Oregon Writers. He offers writing workshops in poetry, literary journalism, and creative nonfiction, with special interests in book reviewing, nature writing and the memoir.

Henry Hughes grew up on Long Island, New York. After completing an MA in Creative Writing at Purdue University in 1990, he spent five years working in Japan and China. He finished a Ph.D. in American Literature at Purdue in the spring of 2002 and began teaching at Western Oregon University.

Hughes is the author of four collections of poetry, including Men Holding Eggs (2004 Oregon Book Award), Moist Meridian (2011 Finalist for the Oregon Book Award), Shutter Lines (2012, with photographs by Paul Gentry) and Bunch of Animals (2016). His poems and essays have appeared in Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, Seattle Review, Southern Humanities Review, Gray's Sporting Journal and Harvard Review, and he is a regular book reviewer for Harvard Review Online. His fishing memoir, Back Seat with Fish: A Man's Adventures in Angling and Romance, was published in 2106 by Skyhorse. He is the editor of a Journal of Melville Studies special issue, "Melville in the Marquesas," and the Everyman's Library anthologies, The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing and Fishing Stories.