Asst. Professor of Practice, Creative Writing
I am a creative writer, literary critic, editor, translator, and scholar. These interests touch, overlap, feed into each other—primarily in the concern of power and power systems. I teach poetry, creative nonfiction, and composition, often with themes connected to identity. My scholarship primarily focuses on 20th century and modern poetry in conjunction with trauma and gender studies. I’m the author of the poetry collection Playing Monster :: Seiche, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was the Editors’ Selection for the 1913 First Book Prize. I have two chapbooks, With Lightness & Darkness and Other Brief Pieces (Essay Press), Death Centos (Ugly Duckling Presse), and I co-edited Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet). I’m a Poetry Editor at Noemi Press, and Assistant Director for Los Angeles Poet Laureate Robin Coste Lewis’ Poetic Truths & Reconciliation Commission: Los Angeles project. My creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Banff Centre, Caldera, Millay, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. My poetry, criticism, conversations, and translations have been featured in BOMB, Denver Quarterly, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR, The New York Times Book Review, and The Poetry Foundation website, among others. I’m currently working on a memoir.
Poetry Collection
Playing Monster:: Seiche, Editors’ Selection for the 1913 Press First Book Prize (San Diego: 1913 Press, 2017).
Chapbooks
With Lightness & Darkness and Other Brief Pieces (Laramie, WY: Essay Press, 2017).
Death Centos (New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013; second printing, 2016).
Edited Anthology
Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (co-editor, Los Angeles: Ricochet Editions, 2016).
Poetry
“Agrippina the Younger – Age Three.” From Agrippina the Younger. Salt Hill 41(Fall 2018): 10.
“Agrippina the Younger – Age Thirteen.” From Agrippina the Younger. PoetryNow. Featured on The Poetry Foundation website (Spring 2018).
“Agrippina the Younger – Age Five,” “The Rhine.” From Agrippina the Younger. BOMB (Winter 2017).
“Little GirlBoy Lost,” “London Song.” Blackbird 16.1 (Spring 2017).
“The Night Voice.” Denver Quarterly 49.4 (Summer 2015): 81.
“Agrippina the Younger.” From Agrippina the Younger. Black Warrior Review 40.2 (Spring 2014): 128.
Essays
“Spirit moves from pieces: Alice Notley’s Collage Art.” The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog (Fall 2019).
“With Movement.” From Arrangement of Parts. Denver Quarterly 53.1 (Spring 2019): 23-6.
“An Argument for Counter-Monument Poetics of Witness” (Part I and II). The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog, Featured Blogger for the month of August (Summer 2018).
“You Can’t Yell at a Hurricane: On Narrative, Power, and Restorative Justice.” The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog, Featured Blogger for the month of August (Summer 2018).
“The Work, the Edit, the Water: Coming to Terms with Editing Out.” The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog, Featured Blogger for the month of August (Summer 2018).
“Andouni: The Shared and Unshared Songs of Armenian Exile.” Los Angeles Review of Books (Spring 2018).
“Diana Arterian Recommends.” Poets & Writers (Spring 2018).
“With Deer.” From Arrangement of Parts. BOMB (Winter 2017).
“Livilla’s Urn.” From Agrippina the Younger. Los Angeles Review of Books (Spring 2017).
“On the Harmed Body: A Tribute to Hillary Gravendyk.” Los Angeles Review of Books (Spring 2016).
Poetry in Translation
Translations of Morning, don’t tear at the silk of my illusion: Selected Poems by Nadia Anjuman [1997-2004] from the original Persian, completed collaboratively with Marina Omar:
“One Small Kindness.” The Arkansas International 08 (Spring 2020): 107.
Ten poems with introduction. Poet Lore, “World Poets in Translation” 114.1/2 (Spring 2019): 82-95.
“How,” “Peace.” Denver Quarterly 53.1 (Spring 2019): 8-11.
“The Most Faded Word.” Gulf Coast 30.2 (Summer/Fall 2018): 102-3.
Four poems. North American Review, curated by Joyelle McSweeney 303.1 (Winter 2018): 28-9.
Book Reviews
Jenny Zhang’s My Baby First Birthday in Los Angeles Review of Books (May 2020).
Victoria Chang’s Obit in On the Seawall (April 2020).
Ariana Reines’ A Sand Book in The New York Times Book Review (August 18, 2019): 15.
Shane McCrae’s The Animal Too Big to Kill in Boston Review (May/June 2016): 69.
Sarah Vap’s Viability in Los Angeles Review of Books (April 2016).
Robin Coste Lewis’ The Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems in The Rumpus (November 2015).
Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts in Boston Review (May 2015).
The Student Government Association’s Academic Affairs Committee (SGA) worked with faculty and the Office of the Provost to include American Sign Language (ASL) as part of the College’s foreign language requirement starting in spring 2024.
