MICHAEL HETTICH, who taught English at Miami Dade College for 28 years, is the author of more than 15 full-length poetry collections and 12 chapbooks. Previous books include A Sharper Silence (Terrapin Books); The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems, 1990-2022 (Press 53), which won the 2024 Brockman-Campbell Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society; and The Mica Mine (St. Andrews University Press), which won the 2020 Lena M. Shull Book Award. Waking Up Alone (Redhawk Publications), which he wrote in the weeks following the death on January 13, 2025, of his wife, Colleen Ahern-Hettich, has been selected as the winner of the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2025 Lena M. Shull Book Award, marking Hettich’s second time receiving the honor.
