Elizabeth Skurnick

Elizabeth Skurnick was born in the Bronx in 1973 and grew up in Englewood, New Jersey. Her first collection, the Pushcart Prize–nominated chapbook Check-In (Caketrain Books, 2005), was recently reissued. Skurnick, who “rhymes, mostly,” as she herself puts it, combines traditional formal structures with contemporary and original subject matter, as her villanelle, “Grand Central, Track 23,” elegantly demonstrates. Eliza Griswold has said of her work, “Brilliant, compassionate, gorgeous and deeply funny, Lizzie Skurnick’s poems are concerned with what it means to be a human, and a woman, at the awkward beginning of the 21st century.” Skurnick’s reviews and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Sunday Styles section, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and more. Her blog of much notoriety, The Old Hag, led Forbes.com to call her “one of the smartest bloggers on the Web.”

A freelance writer, Skurnick lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, about 20 minutes from Grand Central’s Track 23.