I am the first in my family to earn a college degree and I feel strongly that any student can do well in my classes if he or she is willing to ask questions, come to class, study and revise his or her work when appropriate. Overall, I value tenacity over talent.  I grew up fishing, running track and cross country and working in my parents' appliance store.  Outside of academia, I do a variety of my own work including carpentry and auto mechanics.  In the last few years, I have been an avid cyclist.  A native Floridian, I grew up ten miles south of Key Largo.

Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, American Literature
M.A. Florida State University, Creative Writing
B.A. Eckerd College, Literature and Creative Writing

I am  a creative writer and a scholar. During my 2016-2017 sabbatical year, I completed a novel, Where Shadow Meets Water, about an American pilot during the First World War.  In Summer 2020, I completed a second novel, Long Train Home to Scarborough during a stay at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences.  Among my books of poetry are The Name of the God Who Speaks (Texas Review Press, 2018) Salt and Iron (Snake Nation Press 2014) Florida Straits (2005) and At Penuel (2011). My poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, such as the Tampa Review, Poet Lore, International Quarterly and many others.  You can follow my readings and my poetry at my poetry blog: http://www.gregorybyrd.org  and at my Facebook author page.  

 Scholarship includes "Aesthetics at the Southernmost Point: Towards a Definition of Florida Poetry" in Mississippi Quarterly and biographical entries on poets Peter Meinke and Richard Eberhart and an article on Twentieth Century American War Poetry for A Companion to Twentieth Century American Poetry. My dissertation is Desert Places: Wilderness in American Literature.  My prose has appeared in The St. Petersburg Times, American Motorcyclist, Good Old Boat, and Apalachee Review.  I have taught Creative Writing, American Literature, Interdisciplinary Studies, British Literature, Composition one and two, honors classes and humanities at SPC since 1990.  I was a Fulbright Scholar in Albania (2011) where I taught Creative Writing.

I have served as advisor for the Student Veterans Association since 2009.