Stephen Massimilla:
Stephen Massimilla is a poet, scholar, professor, painter, photographer, and author, most recently of the prizewinning poetry collection Frank Dark (Barrow Street Press, 2022) and the likewise multi-award-winning anthology Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice, coedited with Carol Alexander. His multi-genre Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo Press, 2016), coauthored with Myra Kornfeld, won the Eric Hoffer Award and many others. Previous books and awards include The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (SFASU Press Poetry Prize); Forty Floors from Yesterday (Bordighera Poetry Prize, CUNY); The Grolier Poetry Prize; the Van Rensselaer Prize, selected by Kenneth Koch; a Salmon-Run Press Book Award citation, selected by XJ Kennedy; a critical dissertation on myth in poetry; numerous Pushcart Prize nominations; award-winning translations; and others. His work has been featured in numerous anthologies such as the recently released Greening the Earth (Penguin Random House, 2024) and such publications as AGNI, the American Literary Review, Barrow Street, the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Review, Chelsea, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Epoch, FIELD, Five Points, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, HuffPost, The Literary Review, The Los Angeles Review, Poet Lore, RHINO, The Southern Review, Tampa Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and hundreds of others. Massimilla holds an MFA and a PhD from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia University and The New School. He has exhibited his art in several cities, been interviewed on radio and television, presented papers at numerous conferences, and performed his work at venues ranging from The Miami Book Fair to Carnegie Hall.
Longer bio:
Stephen Massimilla is a poet, scholar, professor, painter, photographer, and author whose most recent widely reviewed poetry book is Frank Dark (Barrow Street Press, 2022), winner of the American Book Festival Best Book Award, the North American Book Award, the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, and others. He is the co-editor of the likewise multi-award-winning 2022 anthology, Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice, winner of The International Book Award, the ABF Best Book Award, the IPPY Living Now Award, and others. All proceeds from this book go to the Malala Fund, empowering the education of women around the world. His 500-page, large-format, co-authored Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare (Tupelo Press, 2016), which includes hundreds of original poems, recipes, essays, and color photos, won over a dozen national awards, including The Eric Hoffer Book Award, The National Indie Excellence Award, the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Award, The New England Book Award, The Living Now Book Award, and many others. It was named by The Chicago Tribune as “the best book of the summer” and as a top pick by Bella, Epicurus, and many other publications. It received enthusiastic starred reviews in Foreword, Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, USA Today, The Los Angeles Review, The Colorado Review, The HuffPost, and over seventy other publications. Previous poetry books and awards include The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (SFASU Press Prize selection); Forty Floors From Yesterday (Bordighera/CUNY Prize); the sonnet sequence Later on Aiaia (Grolier Poetry Prize); Almost a Second Thought (runner-up for the Salmon Run National Poetry Book Award, selected by X.J. Kennedy); the Van Rensselaer Prize, selected by Kenneth Koch; a Der-Hovanessian translation award citation from the New England Poetry Club; numerous finalist citations (in contests ranging from the Wabash Prize, judged by Louise Glück, to the Frontier Poetry Prize); numerous Pushcart Prize nominations; a critical dissertation on myth in poetry; and translations of books by Neruda and others. His work has recently appeared in AGNI, the American Literary Review, the Asheville Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Chelsea, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Epoch, FIELDS, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, The Laurel Review, The Literary Review, The National Poetry Review, The New Orleans Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Provincetown Arts, Quarterly West, RHINO, the Southern Poetry Review, Tampa Review, Verse Daily, and hundreds of other journals, as well as in anthologies such as the recently released Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry (Penguin Random House, 2024); Poetry Is Bread: The Anthology (Nirala, 2025); Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Social Justice (Cave Moon, 2022); The Traveler’s Vade Mecum (Red Hen Press, 2017); The New English Verse (CyerWit, 2016); Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015); Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo Press, 2012); Token Entry: New York City Subway Poems (Smalls Books, 2012); New Hungers for Old: One Hundred Years of Italian-American Poetry (Star Cloud Press, 2011); When Icarus Falls: An Anthology (Santa Barbara Review Publications, 2000); The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and others. Massimilla holds an M.F.A and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia University and The New School.
Degrees/Studies: M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University School of Arts and Sciences, in English and Comparative Literature; M.F.A. in writing, prosody, translation, Columbia University School of the Arts; Certificate in language instruction, The New School; Certificate in Photography, Pratt; Post-Bac in Studio Art and Film, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; BA, magna cum laude with honors and the Kaufmann Prize (awarded to one graduating English major), Williams College and Cambridge University; Diplome de Civilisation Francaise, Sorbonne, Extension Universitaire.
Massimilla’s literary and academic fields of specialization include 19th- and 20th-/21st-century poetry, fiction, and poetics; Romanticism; Core Curriculum (surveys of myth, epic, drama, and philosophy, Western and non-Western traditions); poetry writing; essay writing; nonfiction writing; food writing; the ethics of food production; Postmodernism and Postcolonialism; translation; and film. As the former co-manager of an art gallery who has worked as a mural painter, a translator, and a photography book reviewer, as well as an editor at Art in America and elsewhere, Massimilla has lately been interested in exploring the interrelationship between different arts, genres, languages, and pursuits. His recent anthology project brings many powerful voices to bear on the pressing question of how poetry can help us to overcome obstacles to empowerment, social justice, and educational opportunity. Another recent project explores the connections between poetry, recipes, literary criticism and historical essays. He has also written extensively on the role of myth and allusions to antiquity in modernist literature. He has written on Homer, Dante, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Nietzsche, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, W.C. Williams, Lorca, Walcott, contemporary poetry, Bergman, and Freud.
Massimilla’s most hybrid book, the co-authored Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare (Tupelo, 2016) won over a dozen awards, including the Eric Hoffer Book Award, the National Indie Excellence Award, the IAN Book of the Year Award, the New England Book Award, the Living Now Book Award, the Beverly Hills Book Award, and many others. This 500-page large-format volume features 150 nutritious international recipes; a plenitude of Massimilla’s nonfiction essays, poetic prose, and poems; a wide-ranging anthology of works by other poets; a guide to healthy, sustainable eating; illustrations; and 200 photographs, including many of his own. Cooking with the Muse received enthusiastic reviews in over seventy national and local publications and was named a “Top Pick” by publications ranging from Bella Magazine to Epicurus to The Chicago Tribune.
Massimilla’s other award-winning poetry books include the poetry collection Frank Dark (Barrow Street Press, 2022), winner of the North American Book Award, the American Book Festival Best Book Award, and others; the poetry anthology Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon, 2022), winner of the International Book Award, The ABF Best Book Award, the IPPY Living Now Award, and others; and The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (2013), selected for publication in the Stephen F. Austin University Press Poetry Series Prize Competition. His collection Forty Floors from Yesterday (Bordighera, CUNY, 2002) received the Sonia Raiziss-Giop Bordighera Prize and was translated into Italian by Luigi Bonaffini; his sonnet sequence Later on Aiaia (2001) received the Grolier Poetry Prize; his volume Almost a Second Thought was runner-up for the Salmon Run National Poetry Book Award, selected by the poet and Paris Review editor X.J. Kennedy. Other work has received a Van Rensselaer Prize, selected by Kenneth Koch; numerous Pushcart Prize nominations; a Der-Hovanessian translation award citation from the New England Poetry Club, and other honors. Massimilla has also written an extensive critical dissertation on myth in modern poetry and translated book-length works by Pablo Neruda and other authors.
Massimilla’s articles, poems, translations, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including AGNI, The American Literary Review, Ashville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Ariel: Review of International English Literature, Barrow Street, BigCityLit, Big Muddy, The Bitter Oleander, Chelsea, Colorado Review, The Cream City Review, Confrontation, Denver Quarterly, Descant, Diode, DIAGRAM, Epoch, The Epoch Times, Euphony, FIELDS, Fulcrum, Green Mountains Review, The Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, the G.W. Review, High Plains Literary Review, Hunger Mountain, Interim, Jet Fuel, The Laurel Review, The Literary Review, Mantis (Stanford University Review), The Marlboro Review, Midwest Quarterly, The National Poetry Review, Natural Bridge, The New Orleans Review, Notre Dame Review, Oxford Magazine, PANK, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Posit, Provincetown Arts Magazine, Quarterly West, RHINO Poetry, The Round (Brown University Review), The Southern Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Tampa Review, Valparaiso Review, Verse Daily, and such anthologies as Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry (Penguin Random House, 2024); Poetry Is Bread: The Anthology (Nirala, 2025); Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon, 2022); The Traveler’s Vade Mecum (Red Hen Press, 2017); The New English Verse (CyerWit, 2016); Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015); Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo Press, 2012); Token Entry: New York City Subway Poems (Smalls Books, 2012); New Hungers for Old: One Hundred Years of Italian-American Poetry (Star Cloud Press, 2011); When Icarus Falls: An Anthology (Santa Barbara Review Publications, 2000); The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and others.
He has been interviewed on public radio and television, presented papers at numerous conferences, and performed his work at many venues ranging from the The Natural Gourmet to Carnegie Hall.
He teaches or has taught courses in international literary classics, modernist/postmodernist poetry and novels, poetry writing, expository writing, American literature, the philosophy of values, myth, ESL/ELL, and other subjects at Columbia University, The New School, Barnard College, the 92nd Street Y, the Juilliard School, the School of Visual Arts, and elsewhere.
Massimilla, a lifelong artist and photographer, has also completed thousands of paintings and drawings, a portion of which has been exhibited in galleries in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere.