Rusty Morrison

Poet, critic, and publisher Rusty Morrison was a teacher for 19 years before earning her MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California. Her first book, Whethering (2004), won the Colorado Prize for Poetry; her second, the true keeps calm biding its story (2008), won a Sawtooth Poetry Prize, a James Laughlin Award, a Northern California Book Award, and a Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. Morrison’s other works include After Urgency (2012), winner of the Dorset Prize, Book of the Given (2012), and Beyond the Chainlink (2014). Known for her innovative use and re-use of form and line, Morrison has been praised for, in the words of Brian Teare, “the way she pairs lyric's mimesis of interiority with philosophy's relentless self-scrutiny.” Her work has been anthologized in the Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (2nd Edition, 2013), The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (2012), The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (2012), and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability (2011).
 
Morrison’s honors and awards include Bogin, Hemley, and Winner awards from the Poetry Society of America as well as residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Vermont Studio Center. Since 2001, she has been co-publisher of Omnidawn Press.