Dorothy Barresi
Encyclopedia
Life
She was raised in Akron, OhioAkron, Ohio
Akron , is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan...
. She teaches in the English Department at California State University at Northridge, where she is Chair of the Creative Writing Program.
Her work has appeared in Antioch Review, AGNI, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, Parnassus, POETRY, Pool, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Triquarterly and Southern Review.
She has served often as a judge for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry.
She is married to Phil Matero, and they have sons Andrew and Dante. They live in the San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
.
Education
- MFA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 1985
- MA, University of PittsburghUniversity of PittsburghThe University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
1981 - BA, University of AkronUniversity of AkronThe University of Akron is a coeducational public research university located in Akron, Ohio, United States. The university is part of the University System of Ohio. It was founded in 1870 as a small college affiliated with the Universalist Church. In 1913 ownership was transferred to the City of...
1979
Awards
- 18th annual American Book AwardAmerican Book AwardThe American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...
sponsored by the Before Columbus FoundationBefore Columbus FoundationThe Before Columbus Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed, Victor Hernández Cruz, Shawn Wong and Rudolfo Anaya to be "a multi-ethnic organizing dedicated to promoting a pan-cultural view of America," especially through the promotion of multicultural writers.One of... - Fellowships from the National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (MA), North Carolina Arts Council. - Pushcart PrizePushcart PrizeThe Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....
(twice) - Hart CraneHart Crane-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
Memorial Poetry Prize - Emily Clark Balch Prize Virginia Quarterly Review
- Grand Prize, Los Angeles Poetry Festival's Fin de Millennium poetry competition.
- 1990 Barnard Women Poets PrizeBarnard Women Poets PrizeThe Barnard Women Poets Prize is a major American literary award for a book of poetry in the English language.From 1986-1999 the prize was called the Barnard New Women Poets Prize...
Works
- "Ephibephobia", "Security", "Carrying God", "Heaven", "Winter Nap", Poetry Magazine, Spring 2005
- "SOMETHING IN THE HOUSE WAS", "STEREOTYPE", West Branch 62
Reviews
Much contemporary poetry fits into one of the many aesthetic categories that lie between the polar opposites of the radically "experimental" poem and the "traditional," often formal, poem. Dorothy Barresi’s work, however, is singular in its resistance, better yet, rejection, of current poetic camps. Part Sylvia Plath, part John Donne, Barresi handles both surprise and expectation with deftness, displaying uncommon verbal ingenuity and intelligence of investigation. Her third book, Rouge Pulp, spins poems of startling metaphysical image shot through with slang and pop culture. Her narrators are bold, swaggering through the poems as if to say, if we’re all intersections of discourses nowadays, then their job is to speak those multiple voices as articulately as possible.