Erika Meitner is the author of six books of poems, including Ideal Cities (HarperCollins, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry series winner; Copia (BOA Editions, 2014); and Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her newest book, Useful Junk, was published by BOA Editions in 2022. Meitner’s poems have been anthologized widely, and have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, Electric Literature, The New York Times, The New Republic, Oxford American, Poetry, Orion, The Believer, and elsewhere. She also creates larger-scale documentary photo/text projects on urban environments, with photographers. These include “This is Not a Requiem for Detroit” and “RNC CLE” for Virginia Quarterly Review with Ryan Spencer Reed, and an ongoing project on Miami and sea-level rise with Anna Maria Barry-Jester, part of which was featured as the cover story in the Summer 2021 issue of VQR (“Reimagining Magic City“). Other honors include fellowships from MacDowell, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, T.S. Eliot House, Blue Mountain Center, Loghaven Artist Residency, Marble House Project, and Bethany Arts Community. She was the 2015 US-UK Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast, a 2022 Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellow, and is currently a 2023-2025 Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Fellow.
DEGREES AND INSTITUTIONS
- MFA, Creative Writing (Poetry), University of Virginia
- MA, Religious Studies (Jewish Studies), University of Virginia
- AB, Dartmouth College
RESEARCH & TEACHING INTERESTS
poetry, creative non-fiction, contemporary American poetics, poetry and performance, documentary poetry, hybrid forms, new media creative writing, the arts and social justice, Jewish American literature and culture
SELECT PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS:
- Useful Junk, poems (BOA Editions, 2022).
- Holy Moly Carry Me, poems (BOA Editions, 2018).
- Finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry
- Winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry
- Finalist for the 2019 Library of Virginia Award in Poetry
- Copia, poems (BOA Editions, 2014).
- Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls, poems (Anhinga Press, 2011).
- Ideal Cities, poems (Harper Perennial, 2010).
- Winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series
- Inventory at the All-night Drugstore, poems (Anhinga Press, 2003).