Aidan Forster

Aidan is a poet and teacher from Greenville, South Carolina. They graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University, where they won numerous Literary Arts prizes and served as a Social Science and Humanities Presidential Scholar.

Aidan is the author of the chapbook Exit Pastoral (YesYes Books, 2019), and their work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bennington Review, Best New Poets, Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM, Indiana Review, Lambda Literary, Muzzle, Ninth Letter, Sixth Finch, The Rumpus, Teen Vogue, Tin House, and Washington Square Review, among others. As a teen writer, they received 7 Scholastic Art & Writing National Gold Medals in Poetry and Fiction, a Best in Grade Award for Poetry, and a nomination for the National Student Poet designation. They were also a 2018 National YoungArts Foundation Winner with Distinction in Creative Nonfiction and Winner in Poetry. As a 2018 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, Aidan performed their poetry at the Kennedy Center and received the inaugural Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award.

Aidan has worked as an associate editor for Sibling Rivalry Press, as a poetry staff reader and poetry mentor for The Adroit Journal, and as a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine. High school writers who have worked with Aidan have achieved recognition through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the National YoungArts Foundation, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, and more. Aidan has taught for five consecutive summers at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities' creative writing programs, and — when they aren't working on their next manuscript — works as a Specialty Patient Innovation Analyst for CVS Health.