Wendy Wisner
Freelance Journalist
Biography
Wendy Wisner’s third collection of poems, The New Life, was published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) in 2024. She is also the author of two previous books of poems, Epicenter and Morph and Bloom. Wendy’s poems and essays have been published in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, THRUSH, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere. Wendy is currently an Associate Editor at Rise Up Review.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
My paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors and my maternal grandparents were first generation Jews who grew up in tenements on the Lower East Side. But both of my parents were atheist and fairly removed from their Judaism. Of course, we were very much cultural Jews and teeming with Jewish anxiety. But my Jewish identity wasn\’t something I thought about deeply, and didn’t write about much. Only in the past few years have I dug into my family history and started to write poems that explore my Jewishness, as well as some of the intergenerational traumas that run through my family line as a result of Jewish persecution.
Published Works
The New Life (Cornerstone Press at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, 2024)
Morph and Bloom (CW Books, 2013)
Another Place of Rocking (Pudding House Press, 2010)
Epicenter (CW Books, 2004)
Links to Sample Works
- Jet Fuel Review, “Devoured” and “Ordinary Light”
- Valparaiso Poetry Review, “My Father’s Life in the Sun”
- Verse Daily, “Dream of the End of the World”
