Visiting Writers Series: Juliana Spahr

Bio:

Juliana Spahr is a writer and scholar of literature. Ars Poeticas received the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her 2015 poetry collection, That Winter the Wolf Came, takes as its concern the global spread of political struggles located at the intersection of ecological and economic catastrophe. She also publishes literary prose. Highly fictionalized but still probably memoir, Army of Lovers was cowritten with David Buuck and tells the story of two mediocre poets who are attempting to write poetry in a time when poetry’s importance is on the decline. Her most recent book of scholarship, Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment, explores the ambiguous and disconcerting role that literature plays in upholding the modern nation-state. She was also the editor, with Claudia Rankine, of American Women Poets in the 21st Century.

Juliana Spahr is the 2nd Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence, a new residency program hosted by the UMass Amhest MFA for Poets & Writers. The Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence program brings renowned poets and writers to the UMass Amherst campus to work with creative writers in a weeklong intensive featuring craft talks, readings, and classroom visits.
 

About the Visiting Writers Series:

Now in its sixty-second year, the nationally-renowned Visiting Writers Series at UMass Amherst presents emerging and established writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The series is sponsored by the MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action, and is made possible with support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of Massachusetts Arts Council, and the English Department.