Lauren Rusk

Lauren Rusk

Lauren Rusk is a poet and Virginia Woolf scholar whose work includes The Life Writing of Otherness: Woolf, Baldwin, Kingston, and Winterson (a study of autobiographical prose) and the poetry collection Pictures in the Firestorm. In her writing and teaching, Lauren focuses on the poetry of engagement–poems that arise from place, social history, science, and visual art. Her focus on outward-looking poetry  prompted an essay in the Writer’s Chronicle on “The Possibilities and Perils of Writing Poems about Visual Art.” Lauren just finished a chapbook of poems, What Remains to Be Seen, in response to children’s drawings from the Theresienstadt prison camp. Her poems and essays have appeared in such publications as Best New Poets, whose Open Competition Prize she won; Hotel Amerika; and the Writer’s Chronicle. Lauren teaches at Stanford University, frequently at its campuses in Paris, Oxford, and Berlin. web.stanford.edu/~rusk/. Master Class Leader, Waves Discussion Series Contributor.