Harshman’s fourteenth children’s book, FALLINGWATER, co-written with Anna Smucker, was published by Roaring Brook/Macmillan in 2017 and has been an Amazon Book of the Month choice, as well as a Junior Library Guild selection.  A previous title, THE STORM, was a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children.  Children’s books have been translated into Danish, Korean, Swedish, Spanish, and Japanese. His latest collection of poems, WOMAN IN RED ANORAK, won the 2017 Blue Lynx Prize and was published by Lynx House/University of Washington Press in 2018. His poetry collection, BELIEVE WHAT YOU CAN,  published in 2016 by West Virginia University Press, won the Weatherford Award from the Appalachian Studies Association. It was also named the Appalachian Book of the Year by the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival in Tennessee.  Poems have been anthologized by Kent State University, the University of Iowa, University of Georgia, SPM Publications [London], and the University of Arizona. He has also just been named the co-winner of the 2019 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award for this poem, “Poet in the Schools.”

Marc Harshman in conversation with Neil Gaiman at the WV Book Festival 2015.

He holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. In the spring of 2016 he was an invited reader at the Greenwich Book Festival in London and recently returned from performing with Doug Van Gundy a show titled, Running with Whiskey, highlighting poetry, music, and storytelling at the Red House Arts Centre in Wales.  Appointed in 2012, he is the seventh poet laureate of West Virginia.

Harshman’s newest collection of poems, THE SHADOW TESTIMONIES, has just been scheduled for publication by the Irish publisher, Salmon Press, in County Clare, Republic of Ireland.