Jeff Hardin was born in Savannah, TN, (Hardin county), an eighth generation descendant of the county's founder. He is a graduate of Austin Peay State University (B.S. in English) and the University of Alabama (M.F.A. in Poetry). He is the author of four chapbooks: Generosity for a Later Generation (Seven Kitchens Press, 2021), Until That Yellow Bird Returns (Red Hydra Press, 2015), Deep in the Shallows (GreenTower Press, 2002), and The Slow Hill Out (Pudding House, 2003) as well as six collections of poetry: Fall Sanctuary, recipient of the Nicholas Roerich Prize from Story Line Press; Notes for a Praise Book, selected by Toi Derricotte and published by Jacar Press; Restoring the Narrative, which received the Donald Justice Poetry Prize; Small Revolution; No Other Kind of World, recipient of the X. J. Kennedy Prize, and A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being. His seventh book, Watermark, is forthcoming in early 2022, and his eighth, Strange Land, in late 2022. More than 700 of his poems have appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, The New Republic, The Hudson Review, The Gettysburg Review, Southwest Review, Poetry Northwest, Hotel Amerika, Meridian, Tar River Poetry, The Florida Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poem, Zone 3, and many others. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. Originally from Savannah, TN, he is a professor of English at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, TN. He serves as an editor for the online journal One.