Crystal Oliver

Biography

Crystal Oliver is a poet and songwriter living in Southern Maryland with particular interests in literary citizenship as community service, studies in songwriters, and professional literacy. She is a lecturer of English, an adjunct professor of Music, the Director of the Chesapeake Writers' Conference, and the Poetry Editor for the EcoTheo Review. Her areas of teaching specialization include creative writing, the poetics of song, and feminist and multicultural critical approaches to the literature of music, magic, and addiction. She has also taught at Pratt Institute, The City University of New York, and Brooklyn College, among other places. She has released four albums: Fixing to Break (MW Records, 2002), Bessie's Last Stand (2003), Voter (2007), and Light it Up (2012). Her writing has appeared in Bluestem, The Brooklyn Review, The Delmarva Review, Woman, and Southern Maryland: This Is Living.

Oliver received the 2022 Jordan Teaching Exemplar Award and the 2022 Andy Kozak Faculty Contribution to Student Life Award. She received the Henrietta Spiegel Creative Writing Award from the University of Maryland, College Park, and earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from Brooklyn College.