Paisley Rekdal

Paisley Rekdal is an American poet and former Poet Laureate of Utah.

Early life and education She grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese-American mother and a Norwegian father. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Washington, as well as a Master of Arts degree from the University of Toronto for Medieval Studies and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan.

Career Rekdal is a professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and at Goddard College's low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in Port Townsend, Washington. She is also credited with having created the community web project Mapping Salt Lake City.

Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Narrative Magazine, Nerve, New England Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, NPR, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Blackbird.

She was appointed Poet Laureate of Utah in May 2017.

In 2018, Rekdal was awarded the Narrative Prize for a trilogy of poems, “Quiver,” “Telling the Wasps,” and “The Olive Tree at Vouves,” which combine "Keatsian lyricism with a mortal questioning of the nature of memory in the modern age."

In August 2025, the U.S. Air Force Academy canceled an invited lecture by Paisley Rekdal after discovering her social media posts criticizing former President Donald Trump, sparking debate over free speech and academic independence. The decision drew concern from the donor of the lecture series, who stated speakers' politics had not previously influenced selection.

Works

Poetry

Six Girls Without Pants, Eastern Washington University Press, 2002,

Imaginary Vessels. Copper Canyon Press, 2017 Nightingale. Copper Canyon Press. 7 May 2019. West: A Translation. Copper Canyon Press. 2 May 2023.

Prose

Intimate: An American Family Photo Album, Tupelo Press, 2012, The Broken Country, University of Georgia Press, 2017, Appropriate: A Provocation, W.W. Norton, 2021, Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens: How to Read and Write Poetry Forensically, W.W. Norton, 2024,