Shane McCrae grew up in Texas and California and lives in New York City. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, including In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015), winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award; and Sometimes I Never Suffered (Corsair, 2020), shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. More recent collections include: Cain Named the Animal (2022); The Many Hundreds of the Scent (2023); and New and Collected Hell (2025), all published by Corsair. Hex and Other Poems (Bad Betty, 2022) was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University.
