Oliver Baez Bendorf
American poet and writer (born 1987)
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Oliver Baez Bendorf (born 1987) is an American poet.
Oliver Baez Bendorf | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | June 21, 1987 Iowa City, Iowa, US |
| Education | University of Iowa (BA), University of Wisconsin-Madison (MFA) (MLIS) |
| Writing career | |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Notable works | The Spectral Wilderness (2015), Advantages of Being Evergreen (2019) |
| Website | www |
Early life and education
Oliver Baez Bendorf was born on June 21, 1987,[1] in Iowa City, Iowa.[2] His poems sometimes feature the landscape of his childhood,[3] and his writing about returning to Iowa for a visit while transitioning genders was published in Buzzfeed.[4]
He graduated with a BA from the University of Iowa in 2009. In 2013, he earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he met his teachers Lynda Barry,[5] Quan Barry, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Jesse Lee Kercheval, and Ronald Wallace.[6] In 2015, he received an MA in Library and Information Studies, also from the University of Wisconsin-Madison,[7] where he worked with the Little Magazine Collection, one of the most extensive of its kind in the United States.[8][9] Bendorf is a fellow of the CantoMundo Poetry Workshop.
Career
Bendorf's poetry publications include the book The Spectral Wilderness,[10] selected by Mark Doty for the 2013 Stan & Tom Wick Poetry Prize, and released by Kent State University Press in 2015,[11] and Advantages of Being Evergreen, which was selected for the 2018 Open Book Poetry Competition of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and was published in September 2019.[12] Poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi called Advantages of Being Evergreen "an essential book for our time and for all time", and wrote that "Baez Bendorf is making a future grammar for the moment all of our vessels are free and held. I am living for the world these poems anticipate… This is a book of the earth’s abiding wonder. And the body’s unbreakable ability to bloom."[13]
His third book of poems, Consider the Rooster, published by Nightboat Books in 2024,[14] was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry[15] and was named one of the best poetry collections of 2024 by Lit Hub and Electric Literature.[16]
His work has appeared in publications including Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day,[17] American Poetry Review,[18] BOMB,[19] Black Warrior Review,[20] jubilat,[21] Poetry Magazine,[22] and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics.[23] His poetry has been translated into Russian by Dmitry Kuzmin.[24] Bendorf has also published essays[25] and comics poetry,[26] in addition to poetry.
He has taught poetry and creative writing at University of Wisconsin-Madison, 826DC, Madison Public Library, District of Columbia Public Schools, Mount Holyoke College, Wick Poetry Center, Kalamazoo College,[27] Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference,[28] and elsewhere.[29]
Bendorf is a transgender man, and has used his work to discuss gender identity and transition, sometimes in humorous ways.[30][31] He is of German, Southern Italian, and Puerto Rican (Afro-Taíno and Spanish) ancestry.[32]
In 2020, Bendorf was awarded the Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from Publishing Triangle, presented to an LGBTQ writer who has shown exceptional talent and promise.[33][34] He was a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.[35] In 2021, he joined the poetry faculty of the low-residency MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.[36]
Awards and honors
- 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry[37]
- 2020 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, Publishing Triangle[33]
- 2019 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series Prize, Seven Kitchens Press[38]
- 2018 Open Book Poetry Competition, Cleveland State University Poetry Center[39]
- 2017-2018 Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing[40]
- 2015 New American Poets, Poetry Society of America, selected by Natalie Diaz[41]
- 2013-14 Doug Fir Fiction Award, The Bear Deluxe, selected by Lidia Yuknavitch[42]
- 2013 Stan & Tom Wick Poetry Prize, The Spectral Wilderness, Kent State University Press, 2015, selected by Mark Doty[43]
- 2011-13 Martha Meier Renk Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Poetry at University of Wisconsin-Madison[44]
Works
- Book: Consider the Rooster. Nightboat Books. 2024. ISBN 978-1-64362-238-5[45]
- Poem: "I Just Chose My Place and Let the Circle Form Around Me". The Nation. 2021.[46]
- Poem: “Impervious”. The Cincinnati Review. 2020. [47]
- Poem: “River I Dream About”. American Poetry Review. 2020.[48]
- Poem: "Settler/Unsettled". BOMB Magazine. 2019.[49]
- Book: Advantages of Being Evergreen. Cleveland State University Poetry Center. 2019. ISBN 9781880834008.
- Chapbook: The Gospel According to X. Seven Kitchens Press. 2019. ISBN 978-1-949333-57-2
- Book: The Spectral Wilderness: Poems. Kent State University Press. 2015. ISBN 9781606352113.
- Zine: Top Surgery. Self-published. 2016.[50]