Dr. Sarah Nance (she/her) is a poet, writer, and associate professor in the Department of English & Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy, where she teaches courses on contemporary poetics, disability and medicine, gender and literature, and introductions to literary studies and composition. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from UCLA and her B.A. in English and creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She directs the First-Year Writing Program at USAFA and serves as faculty advisor for the award-winning student-run arts journal Icarus.

Her scholarly work focuses on contemporary poetry, temporality, illness, environment, and memorialization. Her critical essays have appeared or are forthcoming in venues such as Modernism/modernity, Arizona Quarterly, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Literature and Medicine, and Amodern. Her current manuscript project, Monumental Poetics: The Long Duration of Illness, Bodies, and Memory, examines poetry, lyric prose, and visual art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to argue that these works inscribe loss as a memorial form. In its examination of these memorials, Monumental Poetics offers readers a new way of understanding the relationship between public narrative and private memorialization through poetic form. Dr. Nance’s research has been supported by the Center for American Literary Studies’ First Book Institute at Penn State, the Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England, and the British Academy.

Dr. Nance’s poetry and essays have been published or are forthcoming in journals such as Chicago Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Southern Humanities Review, Colorado Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. She has received residencies from Caribou Ranch in Boulder County, where she served as an artist-in-residence, as well as from Write On, Door County and the Center for Mark Twain Studies, where she served as a Quarry Fellow.

She is an award-winning teacher and recipient of USAFA’s Dean’s Teaching Certificate. In 2021, she won USAFA’s Outstanding Academy Educator award and has been invited to speak at venues such as USAFA’s Education Innovation Week. Current and upcoming courses include “The Poetry of Protest,” “History and Future of the Lyric,” “Practicing Astonishment: Poetic Attention, Creation, & Craft,” and “Land + Mass: Bodies and Environment in Contemporary Ecopoetry.”

Ph.D., English, University of California, Los Angeles, Calif.

Master of Arts, English, University of California, Los Angeles, Calif.

Bachelor of Arts, English and Creative Writing, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.

Associate Profess of English, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2023-present)

Assistant Professor of English, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2019-present)

Visiting Assistant Professor of English, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2017-2019)

Visiting Instructor, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2017)

Teaching Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles (2011-2015)

Artist-in-Residence, Caribou Ranch, Boulder County, Colorado (2023)

Dean of Faculty Academic Funds Award, U.S. U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2023)

Poetry Residency, Write On, Door County, Wisconsin (2022)

McDermott Research Award, Dept. Nominee, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2021)

Superintendent's 3-Star Performance Award, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2021)

Outstanding Academy Educator Award, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2021)

Innovative Teacher Recognition Nomination, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2021)

Outstanding Instructor Award, Introduction to Literature, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2020)

Quarry Farm Fellow, Center for Mark Twain Studies (2020)

Best New Poets Nomination (2020)

Research Support Grant, Maine Women Writers Collection, University of New England (2019)

McDermott Award for Immediate Impact, Dept. Nominee, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2019)

Dean’s Teaching Certificate, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2018)

Excellence in Inclusive Teaching Recognition, Dept. Nominee, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2018)

UK-US Scholar Collaboration Seed Funding Grant, British Academy, London, U.K. (2018)

Irving and Jean Stone Dissertation Research Fellowship, University of California, Los Angeles (2016-2017)

Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award (University-wide competition), University of California, Los Angeles (2015)

Shirle Dorothy Robbins Award for Poetry, University of California, Los Angeles (2013 and 2015)

Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize finalist (2012)

George B. Hill Poetry Prize, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2010)

Charles Johnson Student Fiction Award, Crab Orchard Review (2009)

Therese Muller Memorial Fiction Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2008)

20th and 21st century literature; disability studies, illness, and medical humanities; poetry & poetics; environmental studies; women's writing; gender & queer studies; violence & memorialization