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Robert Eric Shoemaker is a poet-playwright, educator, and theatre artist. Eric is an MFA Candidate in Naropa University’s Creative Writing & Poetics program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. His poetry and plays have been featured in Columbia Journal, Beats: A Naropan Periodical, Mosaic at University of California Riverside, Tooth N’ Nail, Rollick, Literature Emitting Diodes, Chicago After Dark, Thought Notebook, Baseball Bard, Verde Qué Te Quiero Verde, and his debut collection 30 Days Dry from Thought Collection Publishing, which is available on various platforms including Amazon. Eric’s second book of poetry, We Knew No Mortality, is forthcoming from In Extenso Press, with a third book of hybrid work, Ca’Venezia and other tales, on the way from Partial Press, both in 2017. His journalism has been published in Turnout: A Poetic Journalism Zine, Beats: A Naropan Periodical (where Eric is founding editor), Boulder Weekly, Newcity, Evanston Now, Fra Noi Magazine, Artisan Magazine, Printeresting, VAM, and through the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Campus Consortium Fellowship, which sent Eric to Venice to cover Artisanship and Climate Change.
Eric is the author of the duet musical PLATH/HUGHES, which was awarded the 2014 Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize for Best Play and has been produced throughout Chicago and in New York. His project “Lorca In America” was awarded a 2015 DCASE Individual Artist Program grant from the City of Chicago, and featured the production of his original translation, Bernarda Alba and Her House, at Redtwist Theatre. Other productions of Eric’s plays have been staged by Poetry Is Productions, where Eric is Artistic Director.
Eric is a graduate with honors from the University of Chicago, where he was Artistic Director of the Classical Entertainment Society. Follow his work at reshoemaker.com.
