Stacy Szymaszek is the author of seven books of poetry: Emptied of All Ships (2005), Hyperglossia (2009), hart island (2015), Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals (2016), which won the Ottoline Prize from Fence Books and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2017, A Year from Today (2018), The Pasolini Book (2022), and Famous Hermits (2023).
They are the recipient of a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in poetry, and a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in poetry. From 2007-2018 they were the director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York.
While in residence at MacDowell, Szymaszek edited their book-length poetry manuscript, Essay, which is due to be published by Krupskaya Books in 2025. Excerpts were included in a feature portfolio in the Spring 2024 issue of Peripheries (Harvard Divinity School) and are forthcoming in the journal Paideuma (University of Maine) in their issue on poetry and the nonhuman. Essay is a literal record of engagement with other writers and artists and histories, driven by the loneliness and collective friction of physicality, of working in institutions during late capitalism, of queer life, of having a body and aging in it, and of not looking away from death in all of its possible forms.
