David Biespiel

David Biespiel (born 1964) is an American poet, critic, memoirist, novelist, and painter. He was born and raised in the Meyerland section of Houston, Texas. He is the founder of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland, Oregon and Poet-in-Residence at Oregon State University.

Biography The youngest of three sons, David Biespiel—pronounced buy-speel—attended Beth Yeshurun, the oldest Jewish school in Houston. Reared in a family that valued academic and athletic excellence (one brother was a member of the United States Gymnastics team), he competed in the U.S. Diving Championships against Olympians Greg Louganis and Bruce Kimball, and later coached and developed regional and national champions and finalists in diving. In 1982 he moved to Boston on a diving scholarship at Boston University. In 1989 he moved to Washington, D.C., where he studied with Stanley Plumly at the University of Maryland, as well as with Michael Collier and Phillis Levin. He later held a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry Stanford University.

Career

Biespiel began publishing poems and essays in 1986 after moving to remote Brownsville, Vermont. From 1988 to 1993 he lived and wrote in Washington, D.C., and from 1993 to 1995 in San Francisco. He has lived in Portland, Oregon since 1995.

He is the author or editor of fourteen books, and a contributor to American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Poetry, and Slate, as well as Bookforum, the Rumpus Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. From 2003-2013 he write the poetry column for The Oregonian, the longest running poetry newspaper column in the U.S.

In 1999, he founded the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters, an independent literary studio. Faculty and Teaching Fellows at the Attic Institute have included: Cheryl Strayed, Matthew Dickman, Whitney Otto, Karen Karbo, Ariel Gore, among others.

He was editor of Poetry Northwest from 2005-2010.

During 2008–2012 Biespiel was a regular contributor to The Politico's Arena, a cross-party, cross-discipline daily conversation about politics and policy among current and former members of Congress, governors, mayors, political strategists and scholars.

In 2009 he helped formed the trio Incorporamento. The artistic group included Oregon Ballet Theater principal dancer Gavin Larsen and musician Joshua Pearl.

He has taught creative writing and literature throughout the United States, including at George Washington University, University of Maryland, Stanford University, and Wake Forest University, and, since 2001, in the MFA program at Oregon State University.

Awards

National Book Critics Circle Balakian Citation for Criticism, 2019 National Book Critics Circle Balakian, finalist, 2018 Oregon Book Award in Nonfiction, A Long High Whistle, 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry, The Book of Men and Women, 2011 Lannan Fellowship, 2007 Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Award, A Long Journey, 2006 National Endowment for the Arts, 1997 Stegner Fellowship, 1993–1995

Publications Books Beautiful Is the World: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2026, 2026 A Self-Portrait in the Year of the High Commission on Love, 2023 A Place of Exodus: Home, Memory, and Texas, 2020 Republic Cafe, 2019 The Education of a Young Poet, 2017 A Long High Whistle: Selected Columns on Poetry, 2015 Charming Gardeners, 2013 Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces, 2010 The Book of Men and Women, 2009 Wild Civility, 2003 Pilgrims & Beggars, 2002 Shattering Air, 1996

Edited Collections Poems of the American South, 2014 Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets, 2006

Recording Citizen Dave: Selected Poems 1996–2010