Alex Dimitrov

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Alex Dimitrov
Alex Dimitrov at the 92Y (cropped).jpg
Dimitrov reads at the 92nd Street Y

Alex Dimitrov (born November 30, 1984) is an American poet living in New York City. [1]

Contents

Early life

Dimitrov is a first-generation immigrant, born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and raised in Detroit, Michigan. His parents fled a communist Bulgaria shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied with the poet Anne Carson, and received a BA in English and Film in 2007. In 2009 he received an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied with the poet Marie Howe. [2]

Career

Dimitrov is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Prize from the American Poetry Review and a Pushcart Prize. [3] [4] He worked at the Academy of American Poets [5] for eight years, where he was the Senior Content Editor and edited the popular online series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine.

He has taught writing at Princeton University, [6] Columbia University, [7] New York University, Barnard College, Sarah Lawrence College, Rutgers University in New Brunswick, Marymount Manhattan College, and Bennington College.

In June 2012 he published American Boys, [8] an online chapbook from Floating Wolf Quarterly. His first book of poems, Begging for It, was published by Four Way Books in March 2013. [9] His second book of poems, Together and by Ourselves, [10] was published by Copper Canyon Press in April 2017.

Dimitrov published his third book, Love and Other Poems, in February 2021. The title poem, "Love," [11] was published in the American Poetry Review in their January/February 2020 issue, which featured Dimitrov on the cover. [12]

His poems have appeared in The New Yorker , [13] The New York Times , [14] The Paris Review , [15] Poetry , [16] The Yale Review , [17] The Kenyon Review , [18] American Poetry Review , Slate , [19] Tin House , Boston Review , [20] Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and other publications.

In February 2014, Dimitrov launched Night Call, a multimedia poetry project through which he read poems to strangers in bed and online. [21] [22] Some of the components of the project included a video and a poem both titled Night Call.

On November 26, 2016, with the poet Dorothea Lasky, Dimitrov founded Astro Poets. [23] Flatiron Books published their book, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac in October 2019.

Dimitrov published his fifth book, Love and Other Poems, in 2021 which the New York Times book review talked of a source of "impromptu shot(s) of delight". [24]

Wilde Boys

On May 27, 2009, days after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, Dimitrov founded Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon that brought together emerging and established writers in New York City. [25] [26]

Dimitrov has also held salons focusing on the work of queer poets Joe Brainard, Tim Dlugos, Leland Hickman and Reginald Shepherd. A salon was also held in honor of Elizabeth Bishop, with special guests Richard Howard and Gabrielle Calvocoressi. [27]

Wilde Boys ended on November 1, 2013. [28]

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections
List of poems
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collected
The years2022Dimitrov, Alex (April 25 – May 2, 2022). "The years". The New Yorker. 98 (10): 51.

Nonfiction

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References

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  2. Teicher, Jordan (2011-06-23). "New York writers with MFA begin new chapter with readings and projects". New York Daily News.
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