Lisa Russ Spaar

Lisa Russ Spaar is a contemporary American poet, professor, and essayist. She is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia and the director of the Area Program in Poetry Writing. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Vanitas, Rough: Poems and Satin Cash: Poems. Her latest collection, Orexia, was published by Persea Books in 2017. Her poem, Temple Gaudete, published in IMAGE Journal, won a 2016 Pushcart Prize.

Spaar has also edited several anthologies, including All That Mighty Heart: London Poems, which Billy Collins says "gathers mighty swirl of poetry into a gorgeous volume whose variety and heft rival the city itself— its smoke, roar, and flow."

Education

Spaar graduated summa cum laude from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in 1978. Two years later, in 1980, she returned to the University of Virginia to complete her education with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry).

Poetry

Spaar's books of poetry include Orexia (2017), Vanitas, Rough (2012), Satin Cash: Poems 2008, Blue Venus (2004), and Glass Town (1999), for which she won the Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers in 2000.

Spaar's poems have been widely published in many places, including Boston Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, SLATE, The Virginia Quarterly Review, IMAGE Journal, Plume, The Alabama Literary Review, Blackbird, Spirituality & Health, Cerise Press, Connotations Press, Waxwing, TUBA, 32 Poems, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Quarterly West, Verse, Poetry East, Drunken Boat, The Hollins Critic , The Southwest Review, Crazyhorse, The Laurel Review, Bellingham Review, College English, Meridian, Brilliant Corners, The Atlanta Review, The Southern Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Free Verse, Carolina Quarterly, American Literary Review, 64, Indiana Review, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere.

Prose

Currently, Spaar writes a series of articles entitled "Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry," published through the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Spaar has contributed more than 70 articles to the Chronicle of Higher Education, including the Monday's Poem series and the Spaar on Poetry series.

Teaching

Spaar has received numerous teaching honors and awards.

Awards 2011 Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize 2009/2010 Guggenheim Fellowship 2001 Emily Clark Balch Award of the Virginia Quarterly Review 2000 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award 1997 Finalist, National Poetry Series 1996 Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artists Award 1978 Academy of American Poets Prize - University of Virginia 1980 Hoyns Fellowship in Poetry - University of Virginia