Steve Abbott has been a grocery cart wrangler, singer in a garage band, file clerk, landscaper, library assistant, writer/editor for an underground newspaper, criminal defendant, delivery truck driver, courtroom bailiff, private investigator, PR director for a social service organization, union organizer, and college professor.

His poems have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, The Connecticut Review, Rattle, The Virginia Quarterly, Birmingham Poetry Review, Pudding Magazine, Chiron Review, Plainsongs, Santa Clara Review, Poesie (Czech Republic), Ilanot Review (Israel), and dozens of other journals and anthologies.

He received an Excellence in Poetry award from the Ohio Arts Council in 1993 and in 1994 was the first writer to receive an OAC residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

He is the author of two full-length poetry collections, five chapbooks, and several broadsides. He edited the anthologies Cap City Poets (Pudding House, 2008), a collection of 74 Central Ohio poets, and Everything Stops and Listens (OPA Press, 2013), containing work by members of Ohio Poetry Association. He has been associate editor for several literary journals and now edits Ohio Poetry Association’s annual member journal Common Threads.

Steve was a founding member in 1984 of The Poetry Forum (Columbus), one of the nation’s longest-running poetry series. It concluded its 39-year run of weekly Monday night readings on July 31, 2023. Since 2010 he has also been a judge of the statewide finals for the annual Poetry Out Loud high school student recitation competition, sponsored by The Poetry Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.

He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Columbus State Community College, where he taught in the English Department for 32 years. He lives in Columbus with his wife Melanie Boyd and Loki, World’s Best Dog.