Brenda Shaughnessy

Brenda performed on stage for Seriously Entertaining at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater on April 6, 2017, speaking on the evening’s theme, “The End My Friend.”

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Octopus Museum, So Much Synth, and Our Andromeda, which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, The International Griffin Prize, and the PEN Open Book Award. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper’s, The New York Times, The New Yorker, O Magazine, Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Recent collaborative projects include writing a libretto for a Mass commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street for composer Paola Prestini, and a poem-essay for the exhibition catalog for Toba Khedoori’s solo retrospective show at LACMA. A 2013 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, she is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark. She lives in Verona, New Jersey with her family.

In her own words: “I…see the poet as someone whose role it is to push back against anti-intellectualism, anti-activism, and passivity in general. The purpose of this pushing back is to show that there are always infinite sides to a story, amazing unimagined perspectives on any narrative, and no limit to how weird and wild and unexpected our language and its meanings can get.”

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