Stacie Cassarino

Stacie Cassarino (born 1975) is an American poet and author of the collection Zero at the Bone.^[1] Born in Hartford, Connecticut of Italian heritage, she is a graduate of Middlebury College (BA, 1997), University of Washington (MA, 2000), and UCLA (PhD, 2013). Cassarino has taught in the English departments at Middlebury College in Vermont, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and UCLA. She has also worked as a private chef, and cooked at Babbo in New York City.

Her poetry, which deals with subjects such as place, desire, and loss, has been published in notable literary journals such as The New Republic,^[2] Verse Daily,^[3] Gulf Coast, Crazyhorse,^[4] Iowa Review, Georgia Review, AGNI^[5] and the Comstock Review (where she was awarded the 2003 winning poem^[6]). Her poem "Summer Solstice" was featured on Garrison Keillor's The Writers’ Almanac on NPR in 2011.

In 2005, she won the "Discovery"/The Nation Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize, was nominated for the Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award in 2007, and twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She also received a major award from the Astraea Foundation Writer's Fund.^[7]

Her collection of poetry, Zero at the Bone, was published by New Issues Press in 2009 to critical acclaim. It won a 2010 Lambda Literary Award,^[8] and the Audre Lorde Award. Her work has been widely commented on, by poets such as the British writer Glyn Maxwell who reviewed the collection stating: "Cassarino's voice ranges far and near, from the gasp and sigh of creaturely love to the dizzying spaces of American distance, whiteness, silence. Few poets these days can draw their lines so strongly..."^[9]

She lives in Los Angeles.

Sources

• Zero at the Bone (2008, New Issues Press)
• Author Biography at New Issues Press
• "Cures for Love" (AGNI, 2007)
• Discovery/The Nation 2005 Prize Winners and poem "Midwest Eclogue"
• Poem: "Goldfish are Ordinary" at Poets.org
• Review of Zero at the Bone by poet and critic Ron Slate