Hicok is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech. He is from Michigan and before teaching owned and ran a successful automotive die design business. He formerly taught at Western Michigan University.
His first book, The Legend of Light, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press and chosen as an American Library Association Booklist Notable Book of the Year. Plus Shipping followed in 1998. His 2001 Animal Soul was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has since published two more books, Insomnia Diary (2004) and This Clumsy Living (2007), both with the University of Pittsburgh Press. His newest book, Words for Empty and Words for Full, will be published in 2010 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review and The American Poetry Review, as well as in four volumes of The Best American Poetry and three times in the Pushcart Prize anthology.
1995 Felix Pollak Prize for The Legend of Light chosen by Carolyn Kizer
2008 Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Foundation 2008 Fellows
two NEA Fellowships
2008 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress for "This Clumsy Living" Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry - Poetry (Library of Congress).