Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of four books of poetry: Vanitas, Rough (2012), Satin Cash (2008), and Blue Venus (2004), from Persea Books, and Glass Town (Red Hen Press, 1999). She is the editor of All That Mighty Heart: London Poems (University of Virginia Press, 2008) and Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems (Columbia University Press, 1999), as well as the forthcoming The Mind of Monticello: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Jefferson (University of Virginia Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2008, Drunken Boat, Poetry, Boston Review, Image, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. She was the recipient of the 2011 Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, the 2009 Library of Virginia Award for Poetry, and 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