Linda Bierds’s ninth book of poetry, Roget’s Illusion (Putnam’s Sons, 2014), was longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award. Bierds received the PEN/West Poetry Prize, the Washington State Book Award, the Consuelo Ford Award from the Poetry Society of America, four Pushcart Prizes, and the Virginia Quarterly Review’s Emily Clark Balch Poetry Prize. She has also received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Artist Trust Foundation of Washington, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Bierds is the Grace Pollock Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Washington–Seattle.  

Photo by Sydney Kaplan