C.M. Burroughs is the author of The Vital System (Tupelo, 2012) and Master Suffering (Tupelo, 2021,) which was longlisted for the National Book Award, Lambda Book Award, and the LA Times Book Award. She is associate professor of creative writing at Columbia College, Chicago and gives readings, lectures, and writing workshops across the U.S. and abroad.
Burroughs’ poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Ploughshares, Cave Canem’s Gathering Ground, and Best American Experimental Writing, and other places. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, MacDowell, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Cave Canem Foundation. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. She's currently developing a book of prose poetry.
At MacDowell in 2008, she continued work on Imagined Alteration of Hemline, a book-length manuscript of poems. “Dear Incubator,” the poem around which the manuscript breathes, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In residence in 2023, she wrote epistolary prose for her book-in-progress inspired by her lyric essay "Dear Margaret: A Collaboration," which was commissioned by Poetry magazine in 2021.
