Patrick Pritchett is a Lecturer in the History and Literature Program at Harvard University and a Visiting Lecturer in English at Amherst College. His scholarly work focuses on modernist and postmodernist avant-garde poetry. His current book project, Writing the Disasters: The Messianic Turn in Postmodern American Poetry, examines how secular poets combine theological languages of redemption with a poetics of interruption to write the trauma of historical catastrophe.

Pritchett’s publications include essays in Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Politics of Place (Iowa University Press), Ronald Johnson: Life and Works (National Poetry Foundation). An essay on the religious turn in contemporary poetry was featured in ELN. With Kathleen Fraser he co-authored an exchange of letters on poetry and form that appeared in Letters to Poets: Conversations about Poetry, Politics, and Community (Saturnalia Press). He is a frequent contributor to the University of Pennsylvania’s Jacket 2, where his most recent work includes essays on George Oppen, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Michael Palmer.

Pritchett’s books of poetry include Burn – Doxology for Joan of Arc (Chax), and Gnostic Frequencies (Spuyten Duyvil), as well as the chapbooks Ark Dive, Lives of the Poets, Antiphonal, and Salt, My Love. His poems have been anthologized in The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral and have appeared in New American Writing, Hambone, Interim, Colorado Review, Shiny, New Review of Literature, Prairie Schooner and The Modern Review, among others.  

A former story analyst and development consultant in the film business, where he worked for James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, Pritchett has taught modern literature and creative writing at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Naropa University, and Boston University and serves on the advisory editorial board for Journal of Modern Literature.