The Pitt Poetry Series, which was created by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1967, is transitioning from the longtime editorship of Ed Ochester, who retired in October after more than four decades at the helm of the series. 

In the interim, award-winning poet Terrance Hayes, co-founder of Pitt’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, will serve as series editor, along with fellow poets Nancy Krygowski and Jeffrey McDaniel.

Together they will select and advise the Pitt Press on the hundreds of poetry manuscripts submitted for possible publication in the coming year, while the search for a permanent series editor continues.

In 2014 when he was a member of Pitt’s English faculty, Hayes was awarded a MacArthur “genius grant” fellowship. He received his master of fine arts from Pitt in 1997. He now teaches at New York University. His poetry collections include “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin,” a finalist for the National Book Award; “How to Be Drawn,” finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; “Lighthead,” winner of the National Book Award and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award; and “Wind in a Box,” finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, among others.

Krygowski teaches poetry at Carnegie Mellon University and in Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic program. Her book “Velocity” won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from Pitt Press in 2006 and her most recent poetry collection is “The Woman in the Corner.” 

McDaniel is the author of six books of poetry, most recently “Holiday in the Islands of Grief.” He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in the Hudson Valley.