Photo by Madt Mallinckrodt

Robert Lowes is the author of two collections of poetry: Shocking the Dark (Kelsay Books, 2024), and An Honest Hunger (Resource Publications, 2020). His poems have appeared in journals such as The New Republic, December, Tampa Review, Big Muddy, Delta Poetry Review, The Christian Century, Southern Poetry Review, Modern Haiku, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

A former president of the St. Louis Poetry Center, he coordinated the group’s annual high school poetry contest for nine years. In this role, he recruited judges such as Naomi Shihab Nye and Jericho Brown, screened entries, and shook hands with the winners at award ceremonies.

He is a former journalist who covered the healthcare industry for more than 30 years, most notably as a staff writer for Medscape Medical News and Medical Economics. On this sprawling beat, he wrote extensively on healthcare reform, electronic health records, malpractice litigation, physician-assisted death, pharmaceuticals, medical education, infectious diseases like Zika and Ebola, Medicare fraud, and the opioid abuse epidemic.

As an independent journalist, he investigated white supremacist groups, profiled university presidents and newspaper publishers, and detailed the lives of career waiters.

Now a journeyman guitarist, he lives with his wife Saundra in University City, Missouri.