Cary Stough is a first year PhD student studying American poetry from 1945-present with special focus on the Language Poets of the Bay Area and New York. 

Before coming to Iowa, he received his BA in English at University of Missouri-Columbia and MFA in Literary Arts-Poetry at Brown University. For the past six years, he was a public library worker, union steward and Chapter President of AFSCME Council 93, Local 1703 in Concord, Massachusetts.

His creative work has been published in journals such as jubilat, Bennington Review, and his essay "Curve Utterance: For Emerson" was chosen as a finalist for the 2021 Prose Open Prize at Tupelo Quarterly. Cary is also an author of book reviews, published in American Poetry Review, Full Stop, Annulet: A Journal of Poetics. He is a contributing writer at Cleveland Review of Books.