Sandy Longhorn (1971–)

Sandy Longhorn is a poet, college professor, and writer originally from northeastern Iowa who later settled in central Arkansas.

Sandra Rae (Sandy) Longhorn was born to Sharon and Gary Longhorn in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1971, the youngest of three sisters. She attended elementary, middle, and high school in Waterloo before moving to St. Joseph, Minnesota, in 1989 to attend the College of St. Benedict, from which she earned her BA in English in 1993. In the early 2000s, she moved to Fayetteville (Washington County) to attend the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at the University of Arkansas (UA). She graduated with a master’s degree in 2003 and then began her teaching career, first at the University of Arkansas at Monticello (2003–2004) and then Pulaski Technical College (2005–2015), before joining the faculty of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway (Faulkner County), where she became a tenured associate professor of creative writing in the Department of Film, Theatre, and Creative Writing.

As a child, she wished to be an artist, but sometime around third grade, after a frustrating attempt at self-portraiture, she decided she would rather be a writer. She wrote poems and stories throughout her early life, and her undergraduate honors thesis was a book-length work of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. It was not until after her BA that she began to focus her energy on poetry.

Longhorn’s debut poetry collection, Blood Almanac, was published in 2006 by Anhinga Press, after winning the 2005 Anhinga Prize for poetry. She then published her second poetry collection, The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths, in 2013 with Jacar Press, after winning the 2013 Jacar Press Full-Length Poetry Book Contest. Her next book was The Alchemy of My Mortal Form, 2015, published by Trio House Press, and winner of the 2014 Louise Bogan Award. In 2016, she won the Porter Prize. She later joined the board of directors for the Porter Fund, which awards the annual Porter Prize in recognition of an Arkansas writer of merit. She has also published widely in literary magazines, including the Arkansas International, the Beloit Poetry Journal, the Common, the North American Review, the Oxford American, and Sugar House Review.

Longhorn’s first two books focus mostly on place-based poetics and her childhood in northeastern Iowa. Her third book, The Alchemy of My Mortal Form, represents a shift away from this and more into persona poetry. She returned to place-based work in 2023, this time in Arkansas, where she began visiting and writing about each of the fifty-two Arkansas state parks.

The throughline for much of Longhorn’s work is her intense focus on sound and imagery. She said, “I spend most of my drafting time reading each line out loud as the words fall onto the page or screen, manipulating the diction for repeated vowel and consonant sounds, the white space for rhythmic pauses or run-on phrases. As I write, I try to draw from all five senses, to create a world to fill the reader’s imagination.”

Her work also focuses on the construction of personhood and how people navigate their relationships with one another and the world around them. Her influences include writers such as Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton, Carolyn Forché, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, C. D. Wright, Danez Smith, Traci Brimhall, Patricia Smith, Camille Dungy, and Ada Limón.

For additional information:
Peterson, Susan L. “Author of the Month: Poet Sandy Longhorn.” 501 Life, December 1, 2025. https://501lifemag.com/author-of-the-month-poet-sandy-longhorn/ (accessed February 11, 2026).

Sandy Longhorn. https://sandylonghorn.com/ (accessed February 11, 2026).

Steffeneicher, Amie. “Waterloo Native Wins Arkansas’ Top Literary Prize for Poetry Books.” Courier (Waterloo, Iowa), October 24, 2016. http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/waterloo-native-wins-arkansas-top-literary-prize-for-poetry-books/article_6af60d0c-02a3-5fb0-9fe7-72001e4ac116.html (accessed February 11, 2026).

Annika D. Warrick
Central Arkansas Library System