David Hamilton

David Hamilton is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Iowa, where he taught for nearly forty years.  The author of Deep River: A Memoir of a Missouri Farm (University of Missouri Press, prose), The Least Hinge (Frith Press, poems), Ossabaw (Salt Publications, poems), and numerous uncollected essays, he edited The Iowa Review for a few decades and directed, for a few years, Iowa’s MFA Program in Nonfiction.

Hamilton went from Marshall, Missouri High School to Amherst College, to two years teaching in Barranquilla, Colombia, and to the University of Virginia for his PhD before joining the English Department of the University of Michigan, and soon and for much longer, the University of Iowa where he taught Chaucer, Shakespeare, writing courses of several kinds, lyric poetry, and more.  He has been a Fulbright Professor at the Universitat de València in Spain. 

He lives in Iowa City with his wife, cat, and dog, gardens, watches birds, works at becoming a better handyman, and travels when he can, especially to children and grandchildren in Philadelphia and St. Paul. 

Prize anthology mentions

Best American Essays 2010*

Best American Essays 2015*

Best American Essays 2019*

* indicates notable/special mention

Send questions, comments and corrections to info@creativewritingmfa.info.

Disclaimer: No endorsement of these ratings should be implied by the writers and writing programs listed on this site, or by the editors and publishers of Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology.