Scott Cairns

Scott Cairns (born 1954 Tacoma, Washington) is an American poet, memoirist and essayist.

Life
He was educated at Western Washington University with a B.A., Hollins University with an M.A., Bowling Green State University with an M.F.A., and the University of Utah with a Ph.D. He taught at Kansas State University, Westminster College, University of North Texas, Old Dominion University. He is the Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair in English at the University of Missouri.

Cairns is the author of six collections of poetry, one collection of translations of Christian mystics, one spiritual memoir, a book-length essay on suffering, and co-edited The Sacred Place with Scott Olsen, an anthology of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. It won the inaugural National Outdoor Book Award (Outdoor Literature category) in 1997. He wrote the libretto for "The Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp," an oratorio composed by JAC Redford, and the libretto for "A Melancholy Beauty," an oratorio composed by Georgi Andreev. Cairns's poems have appeared in journals including The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Image, and Poetry, and have been anthologized in Upholding Mystery (Oxford University Press, 1996), Best Spiritual Writing (Harper Collins, 1998 and 2000), and Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin, 2004, 2005, and 2006).

He is married to Marcia Lane Vanderlip and has two children, Benjamin V. Cairns and Elizabeth V. Cairns-Callen.

Awards

 * 2006 Guggenheim Fellow

Poetry

 * Finding the Broken Man. (chapbook). Window Press, 1982.
 * The Theology of Doubt. Cleveland State University Press, 1985.
 * The Translation of Babel. University of Georgia Press, 1990.
 * Disciplinary Treatises (chapbook). Trilobite Press, 1993.
 * Sermons for the Wary (chapbook). Franciscan University Press, 1993.
 * Figures for the Ghost. University of Georgia Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-8203-1601-7
 * Recovered Body. George Braziller Inc., 1998. ISBN 978-0-8076-1437-2
 * Philokalia. Zoo Press, 2002.
 * Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected. Paraclete Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-55725-503-7

Non-fiction

 * Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven—A Pilgrimage (spiritual memoir). SanFrancisco: Harper, 2007, ISBN 978-0-06-084322-9
 * Love's Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life (translations/adaptations). Paraclete Press, 2007)
 * The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain (nonfiction). Paraclete Press, 2009.

Edited

 * The Sacred Place [co-edited with Scott Olsen] (anthology). University of Utah Press, 1996)