I was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of a Ukrainian-Belorussian mother born and raised in Cairo, and an Austro-German father born in Frankfurt and raised mostly in Washington Heights.

The author of three books of poetry, a full collection, Leaving Eden (Salt Publishing, 2010), and two chapbooks: Frankie, Alfredo, (Donut Press, 2009) and All the Ways You Still Remind Me of the Moon (Paekakariki Press, 2015). My newest collection, The Flaws in the Story, was recently chosen by Mary Jo Bang as the winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Prize, and will be published in May of this year.

I am currently working on poems for So if I see you from the car I hope you’ll wave, a series of poems about the last months of my mother’s life when, following the double affront of a stroke and a glioblastoma, she was no longer able to form new memories and the older ones began to disappear.

I hold a PhD from Brown University in Comparative Literature and a BA from Wellesley College in Studies in English and French Literature and Political Science. I have taught at The City Literary Institute, Birkbeck College (University of London) and The Poetry School, as well as NYUSPS and Rutgers, and have mentored many emerging writers. From 2001-2015, I lived in various postal codes in London, but since 2015 I’m back on the Upper West Side of New York.