Aaron Shurin

Poet and essayist Aaron Shurin was born in Manhattan and grew up there, in eastern Texas, and in Los Angeles. He earned a BA at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with poet Denise Levertov, and an MA in poetics at the New College of California. Influenced by Robert Duncan and Frank O’Hara, Shurin composes lyric poems that explore themes of sexuality and loss. 

Shurin is the author of numerous books, including the poetry collections The Blue Absolute (2020), Citizen (2011), Involuntary Lyrics (2005), The Paradise of Forms: Selected Poems (1999), a Publishers Weekly Best Book, and A’s Dream (1989). He has also published several essay collections: The Skin of Meaning: Collected Literary Essays and Talks (2016), King of Shadows (2008), and Unbound: A Book of AIDS (1997). Shurin has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Gerbode Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the California Arts Council. He cofounded the Boston-based writing collective Good Gay Poets and he is Professor Emeritus at the University of San Francisco.