HOPE COULTER is a fiction writer and poet who directs the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language at Hendrix College. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Yale Review, Southwest Review, and Terrain. Her book of short stories is forthcoming in 2026 from Cornerstone Press. Her collection The Wheel of Light was published in 2015 as part of the New Poets Series of BrickHouse Books, and her novels The Errand of the Eye and Dry Bones were published in 1988 and 1990 by August House Publishers. Awards for her writing include the Laman Library Writers Fellowship, the Porter Prize for Literary Excellence, and—from the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers—the 2022 Meringoff Writing Award in poetry and the 2023 Meringoff Writing Award in nonfiction.

Hope’s picture book Uncle Chuck’s Truck came out in 1993 from Bradbury Press. After a long hiatus in writing for children, she has recently returned to that genre and is excited to have several projects under way. Hope is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and will be attending their conference in New York City this winter.

Hope was born in New Orleans and grew up in the central Louisiana city of Alexandria, attending public schools and graduating from Alexandria Senior High School. She earned her AB in English from Harvard University and her MFA in fiction and poetry from Queens University of Charlotte. She has taught creative writing at Hendrix College since 1993 and since 2013 has also headed the campus-based literature and language foundation. Hope and her husband, nature and travel writer Mel White (Hendrix ’72), live in Little Rock, grateful to have been rescued by their yellow lab mix, Josie.