Photo by Chris Newman
Evan Vandermeer (born October 8, 1991, Highland Park, Illinois, U.S.A.) has a Master’s in English from Indiana University South Bend, and works as a recruiter for Open Philanthropy, a philanthropic advisory and funding organization. Vandermeer began writing and publishing free verse, haiku, and haibun during the Covid-19 pandemic, and is an alumnus of the Haiku Society of America’s Mentorship Program. His haikai have been featured in the leading print and online journals since 2021 and anthologized in the HSA Mentorship Program anthology (2022), Lee Gurga and Scott Metz’s Haiku 2023, Red Moon Press’s A New Resonance 14 (2025), and elsewhere. His haibun “The Shape of a Life” won a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun in 2024, and his first collection, Snow Day, is due to be published by Finishing Line Press in October 2025. He currently serves as the Haiku Society of America’s Newsletter Editor. Vandermeer resides in Madison, Tennessee.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.