Lia Purpura (born February 22, 1964, Mineola, New York) is an American poet, writer and educator. She is the author of three collections of poems (King Baby, Stone Sky Lifting, The Brighter the Veil), two collections of essays (On Looking and Increase) and one collection of translations (Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Berliner Tagebuch and Taste of Ash). Her poems and essays appear in AGNI Review,[1] Antioch Review, DoubleTake, FIELD, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Orion Magazine, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review , Ploughshares.[2] Southern Review, and many other magazines.
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A graduate of Oberlin College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop where she was a Teaching/Writing Fellow in Poetry, Lia Purpura is currently Writer-in-Residence at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. She is also on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA Program in Tacoma, Washington. Recent visiting appointments include the Bedell Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa's MFA Program in Nonfiction; Coal Royalty Visiting Professor at the University of Alabama's MFA Program; Reader/Lecturer at the Bennington Writing Program, and Visiting Writer at the Warren and Patricia Benson Forum on Creativity at Eastman School of Music. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, conductor Jed Gaylin, and their son.
King Baby (poems, Alice James Books, 2008) won the Beatrice Hawley Award [3] and was a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award and the Maine Literary Award.
On Looking (essays, Sarabande Books, 2006) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Towson University Prize in Literature.[4]
Increase (essays, University of Georgia Press, 2000) won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction.
Stone Sky Lifting (poems, Ohio State University Press, 2000) won the OSU Press/The Journal Award.
The Brighter the Veil (poems, Orchises Press, 1996) won the Towson University Prize in Literature.
Her recent essays "Glaciology"[5] and "The Lustres" were awarded Pushcart Prizes in 2007 and 2009, and other essays were named "Notable Essays" in Best American Essays, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2009.
Lia Purpura is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Award Fellowship (translation, Warsaw, Poland), and a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.
She was named 2004 Writer-in-Residence at Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio.
Purpura has been awarded a Millay Colony Fellowship, multiple fellowship residencies at the MacDowell Colony, and at Blue Mountain Center. She is the winner of the Visions International Prize in Translation, and the Randall Jarrell Prize for poetry given by the North Carolina Writers’ Network and chosen by Mary Oliver.