Carrie Shipers received a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Ohio State University. In 2010, she completed a Ph.D. in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her poems and reviews have including Connecticut Review, Crab Orchard Review,Hayden’s Ferry Review, North American Review, and Prairie Schooner. She is the author of two chapbooks, Ghost-Writing (Pudding House, 2007), and Rescue Conditions (Slipstream, 2008).

Books by Carrie Shipers:

Other poems on the web by Carrie Shipers:
Three poems
"Medical History"
"Target Practice"
"War Stories"

About Ordinary Mourning:

"Sometimes the dead speak, sometimes the haunted living in Carrie Shipers's stunningly original new collection, Ordinary Mourning, which takes its title from a Victorian stage of grief. We readers may find our allies in Shipers’s dead, their voices compelling, edgy and dry-witted, speaking to keep us alive. 'How much better / than guardian angels, these ghosts who love / the living too much to let them die?' she asks. Shiver and enjoy the rise of this accomplished young poet."
—Hilda Raz

"Ordinary Mourning succeeds in making us feel we have explored the arena where ghosts meet the living, with Shipers as our alarmingly cool guide. Rooted in the conviction that we will all sooner or later need a ghost or two, this is a book that won’t be easily forgotten—perhaps a haunting book."
—Mark Halliday

"In her first full-length collection, Ordinary Mourning, Carrie Shipers writes: 'When you lose what you love, you learn to love / the loss, to guard its ache.' Skating the borders between this realm and the next, Shipers understands her duty to embrace the dead, telling their stories with passion and skill."
—Dorianne Laux