Robin  Behn

  • Title: Professor
  • Department: English
  • College: Arts & Sciences

Bio

Professor of English Robin Behn teaches in UA’s Program in Creative Writing. She holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, M.A. from The University of Missouri, and M.F.A. from The University of Iowa. Behn is a recipient of UA’s Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award, a Community-Based Partnership outreach award, and A&S Leadership Board Fellowship. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Alabama Council on the Arts. Behn publishes books of poems, most recently Quarry Cross. In her written work she explores narrative, the musical and structural properties of language, and the nature of consciousness, cognition, complex emotion, spiritual questions, and social issues.

Behn’s new edited volume, Once Upon a Time in the Twenty-first Century: Unexpected Exercises in Creative Writing, showcases exercises originally developed by UA MFA in Creative Writing students for young writers in UA’s Creative Writing Club.

Behn is a musician as well as a writer. She plays flute and penny whistle in Over the Moon band, wrote the libretto for a new UA opera, “Freedom and Fire: A Civil War Story,” and writes “Fiddle Tune Poems” combining her poetry with traditional music. Behn has collaborated with visual artists, choreographers, composers, and other writers, and teaches courses about collaboration.

Website

https://robinbehn.com/