Carla Harryman

She was born in Orange, California. Harryman earned a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1975, studying in the College of Creative Studies. She later completed a Master of Arts in Creative Arts Interdisciplinary Studies at San Francisco State University in 1978.^[3][4][5]

Harryman has served as Professor in the Department of English, Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University since 2008, where she has worked as tenured and tenure-track faculty.^[6] Before joining Eastern Michigan University, she taught at Wayne State University from 1996 to 2008 as Lecturer and later Senior Lecturer in the Department of English.^[7]

She has also held visiting and teaching appointments at numerous institutions, including Bard College as MFA Summer Faculty at the Milton Avery School of the Arts^[8], University of Washington Bothell as Senior Consulting Artist in the MFA Program in Poetics^[9], Ohio University as Visiting Writer, and Goddard College as MFA Writing Faculty. She also taught at Naropa Institute^[10], University of California, San Diego, and the California College of Arts and Crafts.^[11]

Alongside her academic work, Harryman has built an extensive literary career through publications in poetry, fiction, essays, and dramatic writing. Her notable books include Memory Play (1994)^[12], There Never Was a Rose Without a Thorn (1995)^[13], Gardener of Stars (2001), Adorno’s Noise (2008)^[14], W—/M— (2013), A Voice to Perform: One Opera/Two Plays (2020), and Cloud Cantata (2022). She is also known for collaborative projects such as The Grand Piano, a ten-volume collective autobiography with writers including Lyn Hejinian and Rae Armantrout.^[15]

Her interdisciplinary work in poetry and performance has earned recognition through awards such as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award in Poetry (2004)^[16], the National Performance Network principal artist award for Gardener of Stars (2016), and the Ronald C. Collins Distinguished Faculty in Creative Activity Award from Eastern Michigan University (2019).^[11] She has also received residencies and grants from organizations including the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Headlands Center for the Arts.^[17]

• Percentage, 1979, Tuumba (Berkeley, CA)
• Under the Bridge, 1980, This Press (Berkeley, CA)
• Property, 1982, Tuumba (Berkeley, CA)
• The Middle, 1983, Gaz Press (San Francisco, CA)
• Vice, 1986, Potes and Poets (Hartford, CT)
• Animal Instincts: Prose, Plays, Essays, 1989, This Press (Berkeley, CA)
• In the Mode of, 1992, Zasterle (Tenerife, Spain)
• Memory Play, 1994, O Books (Oakland, CA)
• There Never Was a Rose Without a Thorn, 1995, City Lights (San Francisco, CA)
• The Words: After Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories and Jean-Paul Sartre, 1994, O Books (Oakland, CA)
• Gardener of Stars, 2001, Atelos (Berkeley, CA)
• Baby, 2005, Adventures in Poetry (New York, NY)
• Tourjours L’epine Est Sous La Rose, 2006, Ikko (Paris, France) Translation of There Never Was a Rose Without a Thorn. Translated by Martin Richet
• Open Box (Improvisations), 2007, Belladonna Books, (Brooklyn, NY)
• Lust for Life: On the Writing of Kathy Acker, 2006, Verso (New York, NY and London, England): co-edited with Amy Scholder and Avital Ronell.
• Adorno's Noise, 2008, Essay Press (Ithaca, NY)
• The Wide Road (with Lyn Hejinian), 2011, Belladonna Books (New York, NY)
• W--/M--, 2013, SplitLevel Texts (Ann Arbor, MI)
• Artifact of Hope, 2017, Ordinance Series, Kenning Editions (Chicago, IL)
• L'impromptue de Hannah/Hannah Cut In, 2018. Translated by Abigail Lange, Joca Seria (Paris, France)
• Sue in Berlin, 2018, "To" Series, PURH (Rouen, France)
• Sue á Berlin, 2018. Translated by Sabine Huynh, "To" Series, PURH (Rouen, France)
• A Voice to Perform, 2020, SplitLevel Texts (Alexandria, VA)

Harryman is married to the poet Barrett Watten.^[4]