Dr. Paul Brooke is a Professor and the Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he teaches Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Advanced Creative Writing, Environmental Literature, Creative Photography, Experimental Photography, Editing and Digital Publishing, Contemporary Literature, Diverse Voices, Novel Writing, Major Authors, and Literary Theory. He has won awards for outstanding advising, scholarship, and teaching while at Grand View University, plus he has been granted two sabbaticals.
His writing has been featured in such journals as Scientific American, North American Review, The Antioch Review, Latin American Literary Review, Rocky Mountain Review, International Poetry Review, Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing, and the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature and the Environment. In 2018, he was selected for a residency at the Gullkistan Writing and Photography Residency in Iceland. “The Skald and the Drukkin Tröllaukin,” an interconnected series of Norse form poems, was selected second place and included in the 64 Best Poets of 2018. His work has won numerous awards including The Iowa Prize for Poetry (1999), two nominations for the Pushcart Prize (2014), a finalist selection for The Proverse International Poetry Prize (2020), an Iowa Artist Fellowship (2021), first prize for the Icelandic Poetry and Short Story contest from the Department of Icelandic Language and Literature at the University of Manitoba (2022), a featured poet for the Erbacce Prize for Poetry (2024), and an Iowa Arts Grant (2024).
Brooke has published nine books including Strings: Two Yakama Indian Women in the 1800s by a Small Garlic Press in 1998; Light and Matter: Photographs and Poems of Iowa, his first full-length collection, by Campbell & Lewis Publishers in 2008; Meditations on Egrets: Photographs and Poems of Sanibel Island in 2010; Sirens and Seriemas: Photographs and Poems of the Amazon and Brazil by Brambleby Books in 2015; Arm Wrestling at the Iowa State Fair by Finishing Line Press in 2018; The Skald and the Drukkin Tröllaukin by Gold Wake Press in 2022; and Pantagruelian: Photographs and Poems of Torres del Paine by Gold Wake Press in 2024. The Cities of the Plains An Anthology of Artists and Poets was published in 2024 and he served as the editor and designer of the collection that featured 57 Iowa artists and poets.
Early in his career, Brooke worked as a biologist and naturalist in Alaska, Minnesota and Washington State. And during his latest sabbatical in 2018, he teamed up with Paul Donahue and they finished work on Jaguars of the Northern Pantanal: Panthera onca at the Meeting of the Waters, a scientific book focusing on jaguar behavior and conservation that features images from 32 international photographers and collaboration with Panthera, the wild cat conservation group. The 350-page book was released by Academic Press (Elsevier 2020). It includes portraits of six of the most famous jaguars and a trove of information and maps. Jaguars of the Northern Pantanal works to uncover the intricate lives of these misunderstood animals by decoding their behaviors.
Several of his images have been shortlisted for the Bird Photographer of the Year. One of his photographs (Yacare Caiman with Sailfin Catfish) was a finalist for Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2020. His photographs have appeared in Audubon and Wild Planet magazines. Brooke received a residency from the Chateau d’Orquevaux in Champagne-Ardenne, France in 2025 to work on a new collection of poems (French forms) and photographs (focused on the alpine ibex, among other species in the region) for a book on international environmental issues. He has hung ten photography exhibits across North America. Brooke currently serves on the Board of Directors for the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA) (2024-2027), as the Chair of the Awards Committee for NANPA (2021 to Present), and as a Co-Executive Editor for Gold Wake Press (2024 to Present).
