Earl S. Braggs teaches creative writing, poetry, African American literature, and Russian literature. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including WHICH LANGUAGE DO I KEEP SILENT (2006), YOUNGER THAN NEIL (2009), SYNTACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS OF A TWISTED WIND (2014), and UGLY LOVE (NOTES FROM THE NEGRO SIDE OF THE MOON) (C&R Press, 2016), as well as a chapbook. Braggs is the recipient of the Anhinga Poetry Prize, the Jack Kerouac Literary Prize, the Gloucester Country College Poetry Prize and the Cleveland State Poetry Prize (unable to accept because he won the Anhinga Prize the same year with the same manuscript). His novel, Looking for Jack Kerouac, was a finalist in the James Jones First Novel Contest, and a chapter from that novel won the 1995 Jack Kerouac Literary Prize. His teaching awards include the UTNAA Outstanding Teacher Award and two Student Government Association Outstanding Professor awards. Other awards include a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant and a Chattanooga Allied Arts Individual Artist Grant. Supported by Summer Fellowships from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, he traveled and wrote in Russia in 1998, France on 2002, and Spain in 2005. He is a native of Wilmington, North Carolina.