# Richie Hofmann

Richard "Richie" Joseph Hofmann, is an American poet, winner of the Alice James Award, and the Pushcart Prize. He is regularly published in The New Yorker, and has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. Hofmann was the Jones Lecturer in poetry at Stanford University, where he taught poetry and creative writing courses.

## Life and career

Hofmann is of German descent on both sides, with his father's family originating from Speyer. He spent his early childhood in Munich, which he cites as formative in his exploration of the concept of time, and his relationship to Europe within poetry.
He has contributed to The New Yorker since 2013, including audio readings for the online portion of the magazine. In interviews Hofmann often cites music, in particular opera and musicals, as having a strong influence on his life and work. He has described Sondheim's music as "the rock of my life", and wrote the poem "Birthday" as a tribute to Mozart. Hofmann collaborated with the composer Brian Baxter to write the lyrics for the piece "Old World Elegy" for voice and string quartet. The world premier was held in Chicago, hosted by the Poetry Foundation, and won the Memorious Art Song Contest of 2013.
Hofmann's work often explores male desire, and relationship to the body. Comparisons drawn between his work and that of the late French autofiction writer and photographer Hervé Guibert, led Hofmann to write more "intensely, in a way which was more vulgar". He also frequently includes classical themes and images in his poetry.
In 2015 Hofmann published his first collection of poems, titled "Second Empire" with Alice James Books which became critically acclaimed including the Pushcart Prize for poetry. That year he also co-founded Lightbox Poetry, an online educational resource for creative writing, with fellow poet Kara van de Graaf. One of his most widely known poems is "Book of Statues", about the hate crime murder of Matthew Shepard on October 12, 1998. The poem was first published by the Academy of American Poets Poem-a Day on October 12, 2016. On the twentieth remembrance of Matthew Shepard's murder in 2018, The New York Times featured his poem with a reading by actor Matt Bomer.
Hofmann published his second poetry collection "A Hundred Lovers" in 2022 with Random House. The book was featured in the list of top "46 Must-Read Books by Queer Writers" in Esquire Magazine.
In 2025 it was announced that Hofmann’s new book of poems is titled "The Bronze Arms", forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf.

## Awards

Hofmann has been the beneficiary of several fellowships, including the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.
For his first collection of poems, "Second Empire", Hofmann won both the Alice James Award in 2014, and the Pushcart Prize.

## Personal life

Hofmann is married to Ryan Hagerty to whom his first book, Second empire, is dedicated. He has lived between the cities of Chicago and San Francisco.

## Poetry collections

* Hofmann, Richie (2015). Second empire (First ed.). Farmington, Maine: Alice James. ISBN 9781938584169.
* Hofmann, Richie (2022). A hundred lovers : poems (First ed.). New York: Knopf. ISBN 9780593320983.