Cyrus Cassells

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Cyrus Cassells
Cyrus Cassells 2018.jpg
Cassells at the 2018 Texas Book Festival
Born1957
Dover, Delaware

Cyrus Cassells (born 1957) is an American poet and professor. [1]

Contents

Life and work

Cassells was born in Dover, Delaware, grew up in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, and began writing poetry in high school. He graduated in 1979 from Stanford University with a degree in film and broadcasting, and landed a job creating poetry filmstrips in the film division of a publishing house, where he was working when poet Al Young called to tell him that his manuscript had been selected for publication from the 1981 National Poetry Series competition. He then went on to win the 1981 National Poetry Series competition. [2] He has worked as a translator, film critic, actor, and teacher. Since 1998, he has taught poetry at Texas State University in the MFA creative writing program. He lives in Austin. [3] [4]

Cassells' collection More Than Peace and Cypresses (Copper Canyon Press), and his fifth book, The Crossed-Out Swastika, (2012) were published by Copper Canyon Press. He has won many awards including a 1995 Pushcart Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award. His collection Soul Make A Path Through Shouting was nominated in 1994 for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Cassell's poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and in such journals as Ploughshares, [5] Indiana Review , AGNI, The Literati Quarterly , Boston Review , Icarus , and Callaloo . [6]

He is out as gay. [7]

Poetry collections

Honors and awards

References

  1. Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More - Cyrus Cassells
  2. Texas State University > Rising Star: Cyrus Cassells Continues to Form Cultural Legacy as "A Poet of Witness By Amy Francisco Archived 2010-05-27 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Texas State University > MFA Faculty Archived 2010-01-29 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Academy of American Poets > Poet: Cyrus Cassells Bio
  5. Ploughshares, > Authors & Articles > Cyrus Cassells
  6. Callaloo > Volume 24, Number 3, Summer 2001
  7. Jiménez, Mary Frances; Cassells, Cyrus (2009). "Living Witness: An Interview with Cyrus Cassells". African American Review. 43 (1): 69–77. doi:10.1353/afa.0.0016. ISSN   1062-4783. JSTOR   27802560.
  8. "Lannan Foundation > Bios: Cyrus Cassells". Archived from the original on 2009-02-18. Retrieved 2009-06-11.
  9. "Academy of American Poets > Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poet Award Winners List". Archived from the original on 2008-05-14. Retrieved 2009-06-11.
  10. NEA Literature Fellowships: Forty Years of Supporting American Writers > NEA Literature Fellowships > Creative Writers Archived 2009-06-12 at the Wayback Machine