Stephania Byrd
Born in Indiana, poet Stephania Byrd earned a BA at Michigan State University and an MA at Cleveland State University. Her poetry engages issues of sexuality, feminism, race, and power. In a February 24, 2012, entry on the Ms. Magazine blog, Julie Enszer stated, “Byrd’s poetry is an excellent example of how lesbian-feminist writers developed lesbian-feminist theory through poetry. In both of these collections, there is a rich interrogation and reworking of a variety of political ideologies—lesbian separatism, interracial negotiations and reconciliations, identity elaborations and assertions, intraracial conflicts and detentes, and reflections on justice and injustice. Byrd engages politics and theory keenly in her poems while always attending to the art and craft of poetry.”
Two out-of-print chapbooks by Byrd, A Distant Footstep on the Plain (1981) and 25 Years of Malcontent (1976), were reissued together in 2012 as a free e-book in the online Lesbian Poetry Archive. A professor at Lakeland Community University, she lives in northeastern Ohio.
Two out-of-print chapbooks by Byrd, A Distant Footstep on the Plain (1981) and 25 Years of Malcontent (1976), were reissued together in 2012 as a free e-book in the online Lesbian Poetry Archive. A professor at Lakeland Community University, she lives in northeastern Ohio.