Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of four books of poetry: Vanitas, Rough (Persea Books, 2012), Satin Cash (Persea Books, 2008), Blue Venus (Persea Books, 2004), and Glass Town (Red Hen Press, 1999). She is the editor of two books of poetry: All That Mighty Heart: London Poems (University of Virginia Press, 2008) and Acquainted With the Night: Insomnia Poems (Columbia University Press, 1999). She is editing and introducing The Mind of Monticello: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Jefferson, forthcoming from University of Virginia Press in 2016. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2008, Drunken Boat, Poetry, Boston Review, Image, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. She received the 2011 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry, the 2009 Library of Virginia Award for Poetry, and was the recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2009. Spaar is a columnist at The Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She teaches English and creative writing at the University of Virginia.  

Photo by Jen Fariello