Brandon Rushton

Brandon Rushton is the author of The Air in the Air Behind It (Tupelo Press, September 2022), which was selected by Bin Ramke for the 2020 Berkshire Prize. He is also the author of the chapbook, Archaeologies (Aureole Press 2024). Born and raised in Michigan, he’s been a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the American Poetry Review / Honickman Book Prize, while his individual poems have received awards from Gulf Coast and Ninth Letter and appear widely in publications like The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Bennington Review, and Passages North. His essays appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Terrain.org, the critical anthology, A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke (Ohio University Press, 2020), and have been listed as notable by Best American Essays. He co-founded the non-profit poetry outfit Oxidant | Engine and, after earning his MFA from the University of South Carolina, joined the writing faculty at the College of Charleston. From 2020 - 2023, he served as a Visiting Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Currently, he is a Deans’ Fellow, pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. brandonrushton.com

Publications

Book

The Air in the Air Behind It (Tupelo Press, 2022)

Chapbook

Archaeologies (Aureole Press, 2024)

Poetry (selected)

“Archaeology,” Passages North

“Calisthenics,” Gulf Coast

“Public Works,” World Literature Today

“The Waylayer,” Annulet: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics

“Instructions for Stepping Out of Line at a Theme Park,” Southern Humanities Review

“Imitate Inanimate,” The Journal

“Milankovitch Cycles,” Miracle Monocle

Creative Nonfiction

“The Unincorporated Bridge,” Terrain.org

“Inarguably Au Sable,” Alaska Quarterly Review

Peer Reviewed Book Chapters

“Open House”: Prying and Potential in an Early Poem,” A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke (Ohio University Press, 2020)

Literary Book Reviews

“The Piecewise Way We Remember,” Poetry Northwest

“We didn’t want to be good to each other”: On Philip Schaefer’s Bad Summon,” Kenyon Review

The Air in the Air Behind It (Tupelo Press, 2022)