Brian Teare

Brian Teare (born 1974) is an American poet. He is the author of The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map (2009), Pleasure (2010), Companion Grasses (2013), The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven (2015), Doomstead Days (2019) and Poem Bitten by a Man (2023). Teare is queer.

Early life and education Brian Teare was born in Athens, Georgia in 1974, and grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English and creative writing from the University of Alabama, then a Master of Fine Arts from Indiana University Bloomington in 2000.

Career Teare has taught creative writing in the San Francisco Bay Area and at Temple University. As of 2021, he was an associate professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia. The collection won the 2003 Thom Gunn Award and Brittingham Prize in Poetry.

In 2008, Teare founded the micropress Albion Books.

In 2010, Teare published Pleasure with Ahsahta Press. The collection won the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry,

Companion Grasses, Teare's fourth poetry collection, was published with Omnidawn Publishing in 2013. Slate named it one of the year's best books of poetry. The following year, it was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.

Doomstead Days, Teare's sixth poetry collection, was published by Nightboat Books in 2019. That year, it was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry. In 2020, Doomstead Days won the Four Quartets Prize and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award,

Teare's seventh poetry collection, Poem Bitten by a Man, was published by Nightboat Books in 2023. In 2024, the collection won the William Carlos Williams Award, and was a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award. though Teare withdrew the book from consideration, along with several other authors, due to the organization's response to the Gaza war.

Awards and honors Teare has received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship (2015), Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing, Guggenheim Fellowship (2020), Northern California Book Award for Poetry Finalist

2019 National Book Award for Poetry Longlist National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry Finalist

Thom Gunn Award Finalist William Carlos Williams Award Winner Books