Liz Ahl earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2001. She is Professor of English at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, where she teaches poetry writing, multi-genre creative writing, first year composition, and other courses. She served as English Department Chair for six years.
Ahl is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Talking About the Weather (Seven Kitchens Press, 2012), Luck (Pecan Grove Press, 2010) and A Thirst That's Partly Mine, which won the 2008 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Prize. Luck received the “Reader’s Choice in Poetry” award at the 2011 New Hampshire Literary Awards. Her poems have appeared in recent years in literary journals such as Pea River Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Measure, and Ecotone. Her work also appears in several anthologies, most recently This Assignment is So Gay: LGBTIQ Poets on the Art of Teaching (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013) and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (University of Akron Press, 2012).
Ahl has collaborated on poetry projects over the years with visual artists, composers, and dancers, as well as with other poets. She has been awarded artist residencies at Jentel, Playa, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She was awarded the 2014 Moondancer Fellowship for a stay at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.