John Hoppenthaler’s books of poetry are Domestic Garden (2015), Anticipate the Coming Reservoir (2008), and Lives of Water (2003), all with Carnegie Mellon University Press. His poetry and essays have appeared in many journals, anthologies, and textbooks, including New York Magazine, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Southern Review, Christian Science Monitor, Southeast Review, The Laurel Review, The Florida Review, West Branch, The Literary Review, Blackbird, New York Magazine, Making Poems: 40 Poems with Commentary by the Poets (State U of New York P, 2010), September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (Etruscan Press, 2002), Blooming through the Ashes: An International Anthology on Violence and the Human Spirit (Rutgers UP, 2008), Chance of a Ghost (Helicon Nine Editions, 2005), Poetry Calendar (Alhambra Publishing, 2006-2012), Literary Trails of Eastern North Carolina (U of North Carolina P, 2013), A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (U of Akron P, 2012), The Incredible Sestina Anthology (Write Bloody Publishing, 2013), The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII: North Carolina (Texas Review Press, 2014), Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia (West Virginia UP, 2017), and A Compendium of Kisses (Terrapin Books, 2019).

With Kazim, Ali, he has co-edited a volume of essays on the poetry of Jean Valentine, This-World Company (U of Michigan P, 2012). His essays, interviews, and essay/reviews appear in such journals as Arts & Letters, Southeast Review, Chelsea, Bellingham Review, Pleiades, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry, The Cortland Review, Tar River Poetry, Waccamaw, North Carolina Literary Review, and Kestrel, where he served as Poetry editor for eleven years. He currently serves as Advisory Editor to the cultural journal Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, where he edits “A Poetry Congeries.” He also serves on the Advisory Board for Backbone Press, specializing in the publication and promotion of marginalized voices.

Among his honors are the ECU 5-Year Achievement for Research & Creative Activity Award, the ECU Department of English Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity, an Individual Artist Grant from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, grants from the New York Foundation on the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts, and the North Carolina Community Council for the Arts, and Residency Fellowships from The Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, the MacDowell Colony, the Elizabeth Bishop House, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He was named and served two terms as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the Eastern Region of North Carolina, and Domestic Garden received the Brockman—Campbell Award for the best collection of poetry by a North Carolinian in 2015.