Eric Stiefel earned his PhD in creative writing at Ohio University in the spring of 2023, and his debut poetry collection, Hello Nothingness, was published by Main Street Rag at the end of 2022. He earned his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where he served as Junior Fellow in Poetry, and his work has been published in journals such as The Apple Valley Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Prism Review, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere.

Other poems on the web by Eric Stiefel:
Three poems
"Becomingness"
"Melancholia"
"As a Kind of Premonition"
"A Series of Gestures"
"If It's True of Human Nature"
Two poems
"Through Meadows"
"All Night I I I I"
Four poems

Eric Stiefel's Website.

About Hello Nothingness:

"Though its title seems to announce a kind of playful nihilism, the poems of Eric Stiefel's Hello Nothingness are surprisingly full of heart. It is a collection weighted by the vicissitudes of history, to be sure, peopled by the very objects subjected to its toll: crumbling statues, former lovers, a garden that has 'lost its war with time.' But, like the lilacs 'breeding' (in a nod to Eliot) from 'dead land,' these scenes of destitution hover at the cusp of renewal, brimming with potential for new life. Stiefel, then, locates presence in the midst of ruin, reminding us over and again that — as he so eloquently puts it — 'the palpable remains palpable even when it's gone.'"
—John James

"Eric Stiefel's Hello Nothingness reads like the close narration of a dream one desperately wants to remember. 'Life becomes a thicket' Stiefel writes, and as the narrator pushes away branches of memory and personal relationship, we are invited to view vistas of staggering beauty and grief. This is a generous and compelling collection. Unlike the dream landscapes we inhabit ourselves, this world you will not forget. blurbishy, blurbal."
—Kyle McCord