Jeff Hardin was born in Savannah, Tennessee, and is an eighth-generation descendant of the county's founder. He holds a BS from Austin Peay State University and an MFA from the University of Alabama, and is a professor of English at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee. His poetry inhabits the rural South with lyrical precision and spiritual attentiveness, seeking moments of mercy and communal understanding in everyday landscapes. He is the author of seven collections, including Fall Sanctuary (Story Line Press; Nicholas Roerich Prize), Restoring the Narrative (Donald Justice Prize), No Other Kind of World (Texas Review Press; X.J. Kennedy Prize), and Watermark (Madville Publishing, 2022). His work appears in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, and Poetry Northwest.