Acclaimed writer, poet and translator Katie Farris has permanently joined the Lewis Center for the Art’s Program in Creative Writing faculty at Princeton University after a year as a visiting associate professor. She has been appointed Associate Professor of Creative Writing and will teach introductory and advanced poetry and translation workshops.
On October 3, Farris was shortlisted for her poetry collection Standing in the Forest of Being Alive with nine other poets for the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize from among 186 poetry collections submitted by British and Irish publishers. The T. S. Eliot Prize is the most valuable prize in British poetry – the winning poet will receive an award of £25,000. It is the only major poetry prize which is judged purely by established poets. Princeton’s Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Creative Writing Paul Muldoon served on the judges panel this year.
Katie Farris. Photo courtesy the author.
Standing in the Forest of Being Alive is Farris’ first book of poetry, published in April, and was listed among the Top 10 Poetry Books for 2023 by Publisher’s Weekly. She is also the author of the text boysgirls and three chapbooks: A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving, Thirteen Intimacies, and Mother Superior in Hell. Her writing has been commissioned by MoMA and has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, American Poetry Review, The Nation, and Poetry. Farris’ books have been translated into numerous languages, including French, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
“Katie Farris is one of the most innovative voices of her generation,” said Yiyun Li, Director of the Program in Creative Writing and an award-winning writer. “Her scrutiny of life and its many facets transcends traditional poetic forms, engages, and challenges readers, and ultimately teaches us how to live. We are thrilled that she will be part of our creative writing community.”
Praising her most recent poetry collection, Publisher’s Weekly writes, “Farris finds refuge in the seasons and in the fragile natural world. Through its ruminative urgency and Farris’s keen observations, this collection puts the world into sharp and wondrous focus.” American Book Review has called her poetic language “delicious, maddening and mythic” while fellow poet Maureen McLane calls her poems “extraordinary…riddling, devastating.” Farris also garnered attention for her first book, the hybrid-form text boysgirls, which was lauded as “truly innovative” by The Prague Post.
A co-translator of many books of poetry, Farris’ other works include Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose and A Country in Which Everyone’s Name is Fear, which was one of World Literature Today’s Notable Books of 2022. Her work has been published in several anthologies including Best New Poets.
Farris is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize as well as the 2021 Chad Walsh Poetry Award from Beloit Poetry Journal, the 2018 Anne Halley Poetry Prize from the Massachusetts Review, and the 2017 Orison Anthology Prize in Fiction.
Farris received her M.F.A. in literary arts from Brown University and her B.A. in interdisciplinary studies from University of California at Berkeley. Her research areas include hybrid-form writing, poetry, international literature, and environmental literature and writing.
Previously, Farris held teaching positions at Georgia Tech and San Diego State University, and in 2019 she served as the Irving Bacheller Chair in Creative Writing at Rollins College. Last spring, Farris began teaching a section of the popular undergraduate course “Introductory Poetry” for the Program in Creative Writing, and this fall she is teaching two introductory workshops.
“Joining the Princeton community of staff, students, faculty, and administration is an honor,” said Farris. “I look forward to engaging and collaborating with the many folks that bring unique perspectives and creative gifts to this ever-changing institution!”
Members of the creative writing faculty include Michael Dickman, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Ilya Kaminsky, Christina Lazaridi, Yiyun Li, Paul Muldoon, Patricia Smith and Susan Wheeler, and a number of distinguished lecturers. Through the program’s courses, students pursue original work at both introductory and advanced levels in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and translation under the guidance of these practicing, award-winning writers. Students can earn a minor in creative writing in addition to their degree in a major area of study. Each year 20 to 30 seniors work individually with a member of the faculty on a creative writing thesis, such as a novel, screenplay, or a collection of short stories, poems, or translations.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Program in Creative Writing and the more than 100 performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, and lectures presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, most of them free.
