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Assistant ProfessorFirst Year Writing
Stephen S. Mills (he/they) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Core Studies and teaches First Year Writing. He comes to St. John’s University with over fifteen years of college teaching experience in both First Year Writing and Creative Writing. He is an award-winning poet with three poetry collections including the Lambda Award winning book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices (2012). His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Fourteen Poems, The Rumpus, and others. Two of his books were placed on the Over the Rainbow List compiled yearly by the American Library Association. He’s the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award and the 2014 Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction. He was a finalist for the Thom Gunn Poetry Award (2013) and the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award (2023). He also writes essays and plays.
His work challenges gender and sexual norms through a queer lens while also examining our connection to history, other works of art, and pop culture. His other research interests include queer theory, modernism, climate change, and the use of multi-genre teaching in First Year Writing classrooms. His most recent manuscript examines the queer community’s connection to the horror genre through poems that weave together personal narrative, film studies, and queer theory.
His courses incorporate an anti-racist model and utilize Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process. Through his courses, students explore a wide range of texts and genres and create projects that reflect their own experiences and identities. Students are asked to consider the relationship between text and image and create mixed media pieces that reflect how we consume information in the 21st century.
Books:
Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution. Sibling Rivalry Press. 2018.
A History of the Unmarried. Sibling Rivalry Press. 2014.
He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices. Sibling Rivalry Press. 2012.
Essays:
“A Brief History of Sound.” Foglifter. Vol. 7, Issue 2, October 2022.
“A Tale of Two Closets.” Atheists in America. Edited by Melanie E. Brewster. Columbia University Press. 2014.
“Surviving a For-Profit School.” The Rumpus. July 17, 2013.
Poems:
“Final Boy Asks About the Woman in the Trash Chute.” Sprung Formal, Issue 19, May 2024.
“In Life Scientists Confirm the Sixth Extinction Is Underway.” The Cortland Review,
Issue 92, 2024.
“Final Boy Ponders the Slash.” Palette Poetry. Featured Poem, January 22, 2024.
“Final Boy Plans to Save All the Dark-Haired Boys of Crystal Lake.” Bodega Magazine.
Issue 131, November 2023.
“Final Boy Finding a Husband.” Fourteen Poems. Issue 11, August 2023.
“Excerpts from ‘Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film’ by Carol J. Clover.”
New Words. Issue 1, June 2023.
“Self-Portrait as a Queer Slasher.” Queerlings. Issue 7, April 2023.
“In Life My Husband Helps Put a Woman Back Together Again” and “In Life We
Dance at a Gay Bar Named After a Dead First Lady.” The American Poetry Review. Vol.
49 No. 5 Sept/Oct 2020.
“In Life We Do Not Drive by JonBenét Ramsey’s House but Do Buy Edibles” and
“In Life Our Taxi Driver Sings Frank Sinatra to Us on the Way Back from the Gay
Sauna in Greece.” Columbia Poetry Review, Spring Issue 2019.
“In Life We Want Answers About Death.” Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Poets Resist:
2018 Midterm Elections Special Feature, November 6, 2018.
“My Jesus Year.” The Account. Spring 2017.
“The Day Miss Cleo Died” and “On Watching the O.J. Simpson Verdict.” Midwestern
Gothic. Winter 2017.
“A Brief History of How My Parents Didn’t Die.” Tahoma Literary Review. Volume 2,
Issue 3. December 2015.
“On Becoming Domestic Partners, Orlando 2012.” Los Angeles Review. Issue 16, Winter 2015.
“Watching Sylvia While You Cart the Dying.” Berfrois. April 18, 2013.
“Seeing a Dead Lizard After Reading Mark Doty’s ‘Turtle, Swan’” and “The Man on
the Radio Says Boys Don’t Want to be Astronauts Anymore.” Grist. Issue 5, 2012.
“A Man Tells My Lover and Me Happy Valentine’s Day.” Los Angeles Review. Spring
2011, Issue 9.
“In Defense of Marriage.” The Gay and Lesbian Review. Jan/Feb 2008 Issue.
Plays:
Men Like Us. Excerpt included in Pride Plays. June 2020.
Waiting for Manilow. Workshop and Public Reading. Boiler Room Series at Keegan
Theatre. May 14, 2023.
Is That All There Is? Completed 2023.
Link to website: www.stephensmills.com