B. 1963

Artist, poet, and writer Nico Vassilakis was born in New York City. His visual and video poetry is composed of letters and phrase fragments that are swept or cut into shapes emphasizing their structural qualities and ephemeral nature. Referring to Vassilakis’s visual poetry as “less a work of grammar and words than an experiment with typography,” the Stranger critic Paul Constant observed how he “works at the words, shoving them together and seeing what they do to each other when placed in close proximity.”

Vassilakis’s books include the poetry collections Twelve American Cities (2021), VOIR DIRE (2020), and Letter Wheels (2019). He collaborated with artist Friese Undine on Orange: A Manual (1997). Vassilakis edited Clear-Cut: Anthology: A Collection of Seattle Writers (1996) and The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 (2012) and has served as co-editor of Sub Rosa Press. In 1994, he co-founded the Subtext Reading Series in Seattle, Washington. He currently lives in Greenville, Illinois, with his wife, poet Crystal Curry.