Photo Credit: Mark Ostow Photography

Carla Schwartz

Current City, State, Country

Carlisle, Massachusetts, USA

Biography

Carla Schwartz is a poet, filmmaker, photographer, and blogger. She lives half the year on an unbridged island in Lake Winnipesaukee, and the other half in the Boston area. She’s a long distance swimmer, paddleboarder, cross-country skier, cyclist, hiker, and haphazard gardener. Carla has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University. Her poems, which reflect life, love, family, death, the natural world,  social issues, and the environment, have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Aurorean, Eastern Iowa Review, First Literary Review-East, Fourth River, Fulcrum, California Quarterly, Cardiff, Channel, Common Ground, Glassworks, Gyroscope, Ibbetson Street, Inkstain Press, Leon Literary Review, Leveler, Lost River, Mojave River Review, The MacGuffin, Mom Egg, Naugatuck River, Oyster River Pages, Paterson Literary Review, Paddock Review, Panoply Zine, SHARKPack, Silkworm, Solstice, Soul Lit, Submittable, Sunlight Press, Sweet Tree, Switched-on Gutenberg, Tales from the Forest, The EAR, Triggerfish Critical Review, WCAI Poetry Sunday, Wild Word, With Painted Words, and Zingara Review, among others.

Her poem, “Anthem,” won the May 2019 Lunch Ticket Twitter contest. Her poem, “Wormageddon,” appears as a model poem in The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics, edited by Diane Lockward. Her poem “Gum Surgery” was anthologized in City of Notions, A Boston Poetry Anthology. Her poems “Rain” and “Wind” were finalists in the Robert Collen poetry contest in Orange, MA.

Her books include Signs of Marriage (2022), Intimacy with the Wind (2017) and Mother, One More Thing (2014). Her CB99videos YouTube channel has 2,400,000+ views. Learn more at wakewiththesun.blogspot.com or find her on Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram @cb99videos.

What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?

I was brought up in a secular, culturally Jewish family (although I did go to Yeshiva for kindergarten and studied Hebrew for a few years as a child), I gained the confidence of being a Jewish American woman, and this (Jewish woman confidence, survival skills, know-how) helped me achieve in my scholarly activities as an academic engineer, as well as my pursuits in the arts.

In addition, my mother was born in Germany and escaped the Nazi regime in 1939, just after Kristalnacht. Many of my poems are influenced by my mother, and my relationship with her, and her having been a survivor shows up in several of my poems.

Published Works

Signs of Marriage (Finishing Line Press, 2022)
Intimacy with the Wind (Finishing Line Press, 2017)
Mother, One More Thing (Turning Point Books, 2014)

Author Site

Links to Sample Works

Video Reading

Current Title

Writer/Producer @cb99videos

Education

Tufts University, BSEE
Princeton University, MSE, Ph.D.
Bentley University, Certificate, User-Centered Design

Subject Matter

Genre