Critical Essay on Harshman’s Work
Marc Harshman is a nationally acclaimed children’s book author, storyteller, and current Poet Laureate for the state of West Virginia. He holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. His collection of poems,
Woman in Red Anorak (2018), won the Blue Lynx Prize and was published by Lynx House/University of Washington Press, while his collection,
Believe What You Can (WVU Press 2016) won the prestigious Weatherford Award and was named Appalachian Book of the Year by the Tennessee Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. Harshman’s latest poetry collection is
Following the Silence (Press 53 2023). Harshman is co-winner of the 2019 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award for his poem “Poet in the Schools," and his poem “Dispatch from the Mountain State” was printed in the Thanksgiving 2020 edition of the
New York Times. A prolific children’s author, Marc Harshman co-authored with Anna Smucker
Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece (Roaring Brook/Macmillan 2017), which was named an Amazon Book of the Month and is the 2024 WV Childrens’ Common Read.
The Storm was a Smithsonian Notable Book, with other Harshman children’s books translated into Danish, Korean, Swedish, Spanish and Japanese. Marc Harshman has made his home in the northern panhandle of West Virginia for the past fifty years, where he lives with wife Cheryl Ryan.
