Brenda Shaughnessy
Brenda Shaughnessy received a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA from Columbia University. She is the author of Interior with Sudden Joy (1999) and Human Dark with Sugar (2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in the Yale Review, the Boston Review, McSweeney’s, and Best American Poetry.
Cate Peebles, reviewing Human Dark with Sugar for coldfront magazine online, noted the “humor and directness,” describing it as “a book of many sections, subsections, titles and subtitles.… To be human is to be a whole mess all bound by flash and etcetera into a freakish, thinking, feeling thing—one that relentlessly, joyfully, picks itself apart. Shaughnessy draws attention to the contradiction of being made up of so many parts while appearing to be one single body.”
Brenda Shaughnessy was a 2000–2001 Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute. She is poetry editor at the journal Tin House.
Discover this poet’s context and related poetry, articles, and media.
Poems By BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY
Audio & Podcasts
The Poetry Magazine Podcast-
The Fish is Also Cooked
Poems by Sharon Olds, Brenda Shaughnessy, Mary Ruefle, Reginald Dwayne Betts; plus David Yezzi on Anthony Hecht.
Poet Categorization
POET’S REGION U.S., Mid-Atlantic
LIFE SPAN 1970–
If you disagree with this poet's categorization, make a suggestion.
Biography
Brenda Shaughnessy received a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA from Columbia University. She is the author of Interior with Sudden Joy (1999) and Human Dark with Sugar (2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in the Yale Review, the Boston Review, McSweeney’s, and Best American Poetry. Cate Peebles, reviewing Human Dark with Sugar for . . .
