Charif Shanahan is the author of two collections of poetry: Trace Evidence, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, and a Whiting Award, and was Longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; and Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing, his meditative and trenchant debut which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Thom Gunn Award. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, PBS NewsHour, and Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Stegner Fellowship Program, and the Fulbright Commission. An Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Northwestern University, Shanahan lives in Chicago, Illinois.