Paula Cisewski's fourth poetry collection, Quitter, won Diode Editions' 2016 Book Prize and her third, The Threatened Everything, was selected for publication in the 2014 Burnside Review Book Contest. Both were released in early 2017. Cisewski is also the author of Ghost Fargo (selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize), Upon Arrival (Black Ocean), and a chapbook of lyric prose, Misplaced Sinister (Red Bird Chapbooks). She has been awarded fellowships from the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She teaches, both academically and privately. (more below)
portrait: Jack Walsh
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photo: Autumn Pingel
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Paula's work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as Prompt, Brevity, Eleven Eleven, Diode, Conduit, A Handsome Journal, failbetter, We Are So Happy to Know Something, Revolver, the BOMBlog, REVOLUTIONesque, Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics, Resistance Journal, and Ping Pong.
Cisewski founded and hosted several reading series. She started the open mic night at the Artists' Quarter Jazz Club, then co-created St. Paul Calls quarterly poetry & jazz series. She curated the Imaginary Press Reading Series, several 100K Poets for Change events, the Banfill-Locke's 2013 Reading Series, and co-curated the 2014 Maeve's Sessions Series. Along with her artist husband Jack Walsh, Paula is a cofounder and curator of JoyFace Poetry & Arts. These days, she can be found hosting rogue, pop-up literary events, including tiny readings in The Poetry Fort.
Before teaching, Paula worked in warehouses, as an artist mentor with Minneapolis teens, as the owner of a coffee shop, and as the waitress of one million tables while raising her son and earning her BA from St. Catherine's University and her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
