Paisley Rekdal

Paisley Rekdal earned a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She currently is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she teaches in the Creative Writing Program and directs the American West Center.

Rekdal is the author of seven collections of poetry, including West: A Translation (2023), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and Nightingale (2019), winner of the Washington State Book Award for Poetry. Her works of nonfiction include Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens: On Reading and Writing Poetry Forensically (2024) and Appropriate: A Provocation (2021). 

Rekdal’s other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize. From 2017 to 2023, she served as Utah’s poet laureate.