CR Grimmer

C.R. Grimmer (they/them) is an award-winning poet, scholar, and digital humanities educator whose work bridges poetry, public scholarship, and literary criticism. They are the author of The Lyme Letters: Poems (Winner of the Walt McDonald First Book Award), the chapbook O–(ezekiel's wife), and the peer-reviewed, OEA, multimedia book Poets as Public Scholars: Activist Poets in an Age of Social Media (forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press). Their poetry has been a finalist for Best New American Poets and their poems, installations, and essay writing appear in leading venues and journals, such as the Seattle Convention Center, Poetry MagazinePrairie SchoonerFENCE Magazine, and The Comparatist.

Grimmer is the creator and host of The Poetry Vlog (TPV), a digital humanities series featuring poets, artists, and scholars discussing poetry, culture, and media. The project has been supported through several fellowships and grant initiatives, including the Simpson Center Andrew W. Mellon Foundation "Reaching New Publics," The Jack Straw Cultural Center, and the Center for Intersectional Gender Studies.

Their academic research explores intersections and coalitions among poetry, literary studies, critical race theory, queer studies, ecocriticism, disability studies, and digital humanities, with work supported by fellowships such as the Harlan Hahn Disability Studies Fellowship and the Project for Interdisciplinary Pedagogy Fellowship. 

Grimmer holds a PhD from the University of Washington, where they were a Betty T. Johnson Research Fellow, both an MFA and an MA from Portland State University, and BA from Oakland University. Grimmer has been an invited speaker for Princeton University's "GRADFutures Now" and Utah State University's Lavender Graduation. They have taught in higher education for over 13 years at universities such as Portland State University, the University of Washington, Utah State University, and Seattle University. Currently, they are an Assistant Professor at Utah State University, where they are working on a poetry and art process book tentatively titled, Sapphic Ekphrastics: Transcriptions for Access. 

Learn more at crgrimmer.com.

2026 Events
Lagniappe Reading 6