Career
Hicok is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Technical and an associate professor of English at Purdue University. 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. He has since published four more books, Insomnia Diary (2004) This Clumsy Living (2007) and Words for Empty and Words for Full (2010) with University of Pittsburgh Press.
His latest work, Elegy Owed (2013) was published by Copper Canyon Press.