Brief Bio: Eric A. Weil
Eric A. Weil, son of a high school music teacher from New York City and a graphic artist from Boston, was born in West Virginia and grew up near Cleveland, Ohio. After a BS in elementary and special education from Bowling Green State University, he taught severely handicapped children for two years in Ohio's Amish country. Restless, he moved to North Carolina, where he finished an MFA at UNC Greensboro. Then it was back to teaching the handicapped, seven more years. Another stretch in grad school led to a PhD in English, and in 1993 he came to Shaw University, where he is an associate professor of humanities, teaching writing and American Literature.
Eric's poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Scholar, The Greensboro Review, Appalachian Journal, Main Street Rag, Windhover, The Southern Poetry Review, Miranda Literary Magazine, and Sow's Ear Poetry Review, among others. As an undergraduate, he won the Inkstone Poetry Prize. Later he won the Amon Liner Award from The Greensboro Review and several awards from the Poetry Council of North Carolina. He has also published articles on Chaucer, Hawthorne, E.A. Robinson, Fred Chappell, and 20th Century African American poetry. His interview with the novelist Linda Beatrice Brown appeared in the premier issue of North Carolina Literary Review.
His first poetry chapbook, A Horse at the Hirshhorn, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2002.
Eric lives in Raleigh with his wife, Anne. They have a grown son and a daughter in college.