MCC Alumnus Edgar Kunz Returning to Read as Professional Poet

MANCHESTER, Conn. (March 26, 2019) – Edgar Kunz, who began his higher education at MCC, is returning more than a decade later – a successful poet – to read from his first book.

Kunz’s Tap Out was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt March 5. He plans a national book tour through May that includes an April 10 stop at MCC at 8 p.m. in Great Path Academy Community Commons. His work has also appeared in journals including New England Review and Ploughshares.

Kunz says the timing couldn’t be better, as it will coincide with the year his mentor, MCC Professor Steve Straight, retires. Kunz looks forward to the opportunity to honor his former professor, whom he credits with first introducing him to poetry and setting him on his passionate path.

The Wallace Stegner Fellow was initially interested in music and songwriting, and early on he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to attend college. Finally deciding to try MCC, he ended up in Straight’s poetry class. He studied at MCC from 2006 to 2007, during which time three of his poems were published in MCC’s literary journal, Shapes.

Kunz then transferred to Goucher College, attending for three years. He graduated in 2010 and took a couple of years off, working various jobs before applying to graduate school at Vanderbilt University, where he began work on his book. He earned an MFA from Vanderbilt in 2015 and was invited to accept a teaching fellowship there. Later he entered Stanford University on the two-year Stegner creative writing fellowship.

When he landed his book deal, he was “astonished,” he said. “I really didn’t expect that at all. I’m a young guy, I feel really lucky.”

He now teaches creative writing as an assistant professor at Goucher College in Baltimore, and he also teaches a low-residency MFA program at Salve Regina University, in Rhode Island.  

Kunz says he is thrilled to be returning to MCC and it will feel “surreal.” He credits his time at MCC and the class he took with Steve Straight for introducing him to “a lifelong” love of poetry that he “can’t live without.”

Straight says of his former student, “Edgar Kunz showed that spark of talent and apparently he caught the bug. He is one of the young guns in American poetry, a new generation of extremely talented poets.”