Robert Schultz

Robert Schultz, author of six books and an exhibiting artist, has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Award, the Virginia Quarterly Review’s Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry, Cornell University’s Corson Bishop Poetry Prize, and awards for his artworks.

His books include three collections of poetry (Vein Along the Fault, Winter in Eden, Ancestral Altars), a novel (The Madhouse Nudes), a work of nonfiction (We Were Pirates: a Torpedoman’s Pacific War, with James Shell), an art book (War Memoranda: Photography, Walt Whitman, and Memorials, with Binh Danh), and a book of poems and art (Ancestral Altars, also with Binh Danh).

In art, Schultz’s media include cameraless photography (chlorophyll prints, scanography) and artist’s books. A longtime and ongoing collaboration with Binh Danh has produced an exhibition, “War Memoranda: Photography, Walt Whitman, and Renewal,” and two books. Schultz’s chlorophyll prints have been featured by LensCulture and are held by the Library of Congress, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, the Phillips Museum at Franklin & Marshall College, and by private collectors in the US and abroad. His “Being Seen” series of portraits has earned Juror’s Award, Gold Medal, and portfolio prize recognition.

Schultz, a native Iowan, has worked as a truck driver, house painter, and editor. He attended Luther College and received MFA and PhD degrees at Cornell University. In 1985 he returned to Luther, where he taught for 19 years. He also has taught at Cornell and at the University of Virginia. From 2004 through 2018 he was the John P. Fishwick Professor of English at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. Currently he works full time as a writer and artist.