Sandra Beasley’s second poetry collection, I Was the Jukebox, was selected by Joy Harjo as the winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize and is forthcoming from W. W. Norton in April 2010. Her first collection, Theories of Falling (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2008), was selected by Marie Howe as the winner of the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize. Her work is forthcoming in Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years, and her collection of sestinas, Bitch and Brew, was published by Black Warrior Review in the fall of 2008 as a part of their chapbook series. Beasley’s poems have been featured in Verse Daily (2008) and Best New Poets (Samovar, 2005), and in journals such as SLATE, The Believer, 32 Poems, and Barrow Street. She is the recipient of the 2006 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize from Passages North and fellowships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Millay Colony. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she serves on the editorial staff of The American Scholar.  

Photo by Andrew Lightman