Lisa Russ Spaar

Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of a novel, Paradise Close (Persea, 2022), a collection of essays about contemporary poetry, The Hide-and-Seek Muse, as well as seven acclaimed collections of poetry, including Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems (Persea, 2021) and Soul Cake (Persea, 2026).  Spaar has edited several anthologies, including Acquainted with the Night:  Insomnia Poems, Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson and More Truly and More Strange, which collects astonishing American self-portrait poems from the mid-twentieth century onward.  Her short fiction and lyric essays have appeared in The Yale Review, ISLE, The American Scholar, Literary Imagination, The Hedgehog Review, and elsewhere. Spaar’s honors include a Rona Jaffe Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Horace W. Goldsmith NEH Distinguished Teaching Professorship, and an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. More details.