Mark Magoon

Mark Magoon is a poet, writer, and educator. He serves as Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at University of Illinois at Chicago where he teaches composition, literature, and poetry.

His composition courses use social justice as both mirror and lens en route to academic writing—his pedagogy is concerned with critical inquiry, rhetoric, and the discovery of voice in varying discourse communities. His lit and culture courses analyze setting and sense of place in contemporary American literature—and his poetry courses focus on the history of poetry and poetics in British and American poetry.

Aside from his classroom and curriculum development duties, Magoon has taken on a number of different departmental and university roles at UIC. He has twice served as Assistant Director of the First-Year Writing Program, provided faculty mentorship for student organizations and honors activities, mentored and advised graduate and undergraduate students, and served on numerous committees. He has taught writing as part of the UIC Summer College’s Summer Enrichment Writing Workshop, as well as UIC Global, which provides international students with an easier transition to college life and added support in English-language courses. Additionally, he has served as Faculty Mentor as part of the UIC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Initiative helping young poets to author and assemble their first manuscript. His pedagogical innovations and contributions to the First-Year Writing Program were honored by the Department of English with the 2021 - 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2016 he was an Honoring Our Professors Excellence (HOPE) Award winner.

Magoon’s publishing credentials feature works of poetry, creative nonfiction, interview, and review. His book of poems—The Upper Peninsula Misses You (ELJ Editions, 2015)— is concerned with circumstances both self-created and beyond control, and the strain between people and their time and place. His writing of setting has been compared to Willa Cather, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Cormac McCarthy, and poet Philip Levine.

His work can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and all over the web; including After Hours, American Book Review, Blue Fifth Review, Chicago Review of Books, DIAGRAM, Midwestern Gothic, The Nervous Breakdown, and many other venues. His poem "From the Fire" appeared in the Eclectica Magazine Best Poetry anthology. His lyric essay "Chef! Chef! Chef!" was featured at Burrow Press as part of their celebration of nonfiction and on the radio program and podcast Functionally Literate—Creative Nonfiction Editor Susan Fallows said it was, “Unlike anything I had ever read.” His writing has been shared at the Poetry Foundation, read all across the Midwest, and nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He is currently working on a graphic novel and an accompanying novel titled Madammeke.

Magoon studied under authors Kathleen Rooney and Scott Blackwood at Roosevelt University where he earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing, along with a Credential in the Teaching of Writing. He earned his B.A. in English from the University of Iowa.