About Sandra

Sandra Beasley is the author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, selected by Joy Harjo and published by W. W. Norton. The prize is for the best second collection of poems by an American woman poet. Her debut book, Theories of Falling, was selected by Marie Howe as the winner of the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2008).

Recent work can be found in Pleiades, The Normal School, Gulf Coast, POETRY, Barrelhouse, and Black Warrior Review, which published Bitch and Brew: Sestinas in their chapbook series. Her work has been anthologized on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and will appear in Best American Poetry 2010, guest edited by Amy Gerstler, as well as in such anthologies as the i.e. reader from Narrow House, Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel (Second Story), and the 2005 Best New Poets, guest edited by George Garrett.

Beasley is also an essayist whose work has been featured in the Washington Post Magazine. In 2009 she signed with Writers’ Representatives. She is working on Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a nonfiction book forthcoming from Crown.

Awards for her work include a 2010 Individual Artist Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the 2009 Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2008 Maureen Egen Exchange Award from Poets and Writers, and the 2006 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize from Passages North at Northern Michigan University, as well as nine nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Residencies and fellowships include the 2010 Summer Poet in Residence fellowship at the University of Mississippi, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and fellowships to the Jentel Artist Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Beasley lives in Washington D.C., where she earned her MFA at American University and worked for several years as an editor for The American Scholar. She serves on the Board for the Writer’s Center, where she hosts the Story/Stereo reading series and periodically teaches workshops.

Downloadable publicity files:

Biographical Note for Sandra Beasley (100 words) [PDF format]
Sandra Beasley’s Curriculum Vitae [PDF format]
Sandra Beasley’s Resume [PDF format]

Color author photo (Please credit Matthew Wordman) [300 dpi JPG]
Grayscale author photo (Please credit Andrew Lightman) [300 dpi JPG]
I Was the Jukebox cover art (W. W. Norton) [300 dpi JPG]