Stacy Szymaszek
Stacy Szymaszek (she/they) is a poet, grant writer, and sometimes teacher. She was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where in 1999 she started working for Woodland Pattern Book Center. In 2005, she moved to NYC to work for The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, where she served as Executive Director from 2007-2018.
Szymaszek is the author of eight books of poetry: Emptied of All Ships (2005), Hyperglossia (2009), hart island (2015), Journal of Ugly Sites and Other Journals (2016), which won the Ottoline Prize from Fence Books and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2017, A Year From Today (2018), The Pasolini Book (2022), Famous Hermits (2023), and Essay (Krupskaya Books, 2025). Two books are forthcoming in 2026: Starving is the Energy (Antiphony) and About the House (Rescue). They are the recipient of a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, a 2018-2019 Hugo Visiting Writer at the University of Montana, a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in poetry, and a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. They regularly mentor young poets in a variety of contexts, including for the “ESB” Fellowship program they founded at The Poetry Project in 2013 and Queer Art Mentorship.
With her partner, the poet Kimberly Alidio, she lives in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who, due to forced removal, reside in Northeast Wisconsin as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. Szymaszek is the Development Director for a non-profit farm where they are also a volunteer cow groomer. They run a small roving book shop called Bos Books that focuses on literature about animals, biodiversity, agriculture, literature, and the arts. They enjoy swimming, drawing, thrifting/book-scouting, and traveling.
Szymaszek is in a Masters program in Anthrozoology where they study the human-animal relationship with a focus on farmed animal welfare.