Stacie Cassarino

Born in Hartford, Connecticut of Italian heritage, she is a dual citizen of the United States and Italy. She is a graduate of UCLA (2014), University of Washington-Seattle (2000), and Middlebury College (1997).

She has lived in Venice, California; Brooklyn, New York; Seattle, Washington; and Portland, Oregon; as well as abroad in Italy, England, Costa Rica, and Brazil.

She lives in Vermont with her three daughters.

She is currently on the faculty in the English & Language Literature department at Smith College. She previously taught at Middlebury College, UCLA, Fairfield University, and Pratt Institute.

She was formerly a Copy Editor at ELLE.com.

She has also worked as a private chef, and cooked at Babbo in New York City and Cafe Lago in Seattle.

Her most recent book of poems, Each Luminous Thing, won the 2022 Lexi Rudnitsky Editors' Choice Award and will be published by Persea Books in October 2023.

Her first collection of poetry, Zero at the Bone, was published by New Issues Press in 2009 to critical acclaim. It won a 2010 Lambda Literary Award,[3] and the Audre Lorde Award.

In 2005, she won the 92Y "Discovery"/The Nation Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize. She also received a major award from the Astraea Foundation Writer's Fund[4] in 2007, and was a finalist for the Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award.

Her poetry, which deals with subjects such as place, desire, and loss, has been published in notable literary journals such as Poetry Northwest, Kenyon Review, The New Republic,[5] Verse Daily,[6] Gulf Coast, Crazyhorse,[7] Iowa Review, Georgia Review, AGNI,[8] and the Comstock Review (where she was awarded the 2003 winning poem[9]). Her poem "Summer Solstice" was featured on Garrison Keillor's The Writers’ Almanac on NPR in 2011.

Her work has been widely commented on, by poets such as the British writer Glyn Maxwell who reviewed the collection stating: "Cassarino's voice ranges far and near, from the gasp and sigh of creaturely love to the dizzying spaces of American distance, whiteness, silence. Few poets these days can draw their lines so strongly..."[10]

Her second book, Culinary Poetics and Edible Images in Twentieth-Century Literature, connects foodscapes to aesthetic movements, demonstrating how American writers responded to the changing tastes of the nation.

• 2022 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award
• 2011 Shirley Dorothy Robbins Creative Writing Award, UCLA
• 2010 LAMBDA Literary Award
• 2010 Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award
• 2007 Astraea Foundation, Writers’ Fund Grant
• 2005 92Y “Discovery”/The Nation Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize
• 2004 Fellowship Residency, Julia & David White Artists’ Colony
• 2003 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award
• 2003 Friends’ Fellowship Residency, Ragdale Foundation
• 2003 Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fellowship Residency, Millay Colony
• 2000 Writers’ Grant Residency, Vermont Studio Center
• 1997 Donald Everett Axinn Annual Prize
• 1996 Scholarship, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference

• Each Luminous Thing, New York: Persea Books, 2023
• Culinary Poetics and Edible Images in Twentieth-Century American Literature, Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2018
• Zero at the Bone, Western Michigan University: New Issues Press, 2009

• Zero at the Bone (2008, New Issues Press)
• Author Biography at New Issues Press
• "Cures for Love" (AGNI, 2007)
• Discovery/The Nation 2005 Prize Winners and poem "Midwest Eclogue"
• Poem: "Goldfish are Ordinary" at Poets.org
• Review of Zero at the Bone by poet and critic Ron Slate