Karyna McGlynn

Karyna McGlynn is a writer, educator, performer, and visual artist. She is the author of three poetry collections from Sarabande Books: 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me about the Multiverse (2022), a 2023 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist; Hothouse (2017), a New York Times Editor’s Choice; and I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (2009). She is also the author of the chapbooks The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution (Willow Springs Books, 2016), Alabama Steve (Destructible Heart Press, 2008), and Scorpionica (New Michigan Press, 2007). Her writing has been published in Poetry, Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, New England Review, and The Kenyon Review.

Originally from Austin, Texas, McGlynn earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. She served as the organizer of the Houston Indie Book Fest and as managing editor of Gulf Coast. Her honors include a New York Times Editor’s Choice, the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize for Poetry, the Florida Review Award in Fiction, and a Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship.She is the director of creative writing at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and was the 2023–2024 visiting distinguished professor of poetry in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.