Ilyse Kusnetz
Professor
Biography
Ilyse Kusnetz, poet, essayist, journalist, is the author of Angel Bones (Alice James Books, 2019), Small Hours (winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press, and now available with Alice James Books), and a chapbook, The Gravity of Falling (La Vita Poetica Press, 2006). Her Selected Poems will be published by Copper Coin (India) in 2023. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Rattle, Guernica Daily, Islands Magazine, Kyoto Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Stone Canoe, The Normal School, and War, Literature & the Arts, among others. Her work is anthologized in Magic and Enchantment (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poetry Series, 2023); Staying Human: New Poems for Staying Alive (Bloodaxe Books, 2020); Buzz Words: Poems About Insects (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2021); Monster Verse: Poems Human and Inhuman (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poetry Series, 2015); The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems About Perfume (Literary House Press, 2014); Devouring the Green: Fear of a Transhuman Planet (Jaded Ibis Press, 2013); and The Best of Kore Press, 2012: Poetry.
She earned an MA in creative writing from Syracuse University and her PhD in contemporary feminist and postcolonial British literature from the University of Edinburgh. She guest-edited Scottish poetry features for Poetry International and the Atlanta Review. As a journalist, she wrote feature arts & entertainment pieces for The Scotsman, appeared on BBC Scotland, and was a staff writer for the Orlando Sentinel for several years. Kusnetz served as a book reviews editor at the Florida Review and taught the art of the review in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.
A beloved professor at Valencia College, the annual writing festival that Dr. Kusnetz founded is held each October and now bears her name: The Ilyse Kusnetz Writing Festival.
Ilyse lived with her husband, Brian Turner, in Orlando, Florida.
Published Works
Selected Poems (Copper Coin, India, forthcoming in 2023)
Angel Bones (Alice James Books, 2019)
Small Hours (Truman State University Press, 2014; now available from Alice James Books)
The Gravity of Falling (La Vita Poetica Press, 2006)
Links to Sample Works
Subject Matter
Antisemitism, Art & Ekphrasis, Childhood, Cultural Identity, Death, Eastern Europe, Environment & Climate Crisis, Family, Gender, Gender Violence, Grief & Elegy, History, Intergenerational Trauma, Jewishness, Labor, Loss, Love, Marriage, Motherhood/Fertility, Mythology, Narrative, Nature, Parenting, Politics, Sex, Sexuality, Shoah, Genocide, Trauma, War, Other, Multidisciplinary, Math and/or Physics, Visual Art, Feminism, Pop Culture, Documentary Poetics.Profile created by Brian Turner.
