www.kctrommer.com
EDUCATION
MFA in Poetry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor - Michigan Colby Fellowship
Thesis: The Hello Girls, Poems, Laura Kasischke and Marie Howe, Advisors BA in English Literature, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia Presidential Scholar, Hope Scholarship Recipient, Honors
TEACHING INTERESTS
Poetry & Prosody, Editing & Publishing, Site-Based Poetry, Public Humanities, Ekphrasis, Creative Nonfiction
BOOKS
Paragones - Work in progress, offering poems that consider works of art by female-identifying artists
Select poems: “Agency,” appears in the anthology Braving the Body (Small Harbor Publishing, 2024) | “The Couple,” appears in The Common Issue 20, paired with an interview with TC’s managing editor Emily Everett for the New Books in Literature podcast | “Francesca Woodman (1958-1981),” appears in SWWIM | “Self-lit,” selected by Joseph Legaspi as a Poem-A-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets | “through the pinhole, watching” which was included in Betsy Kenyon’s monograph SLUMBER | “(up to now separately),” Winner, CRAFT 2022 Amelia Gray 2K Contest Editor’s Choice Award; nominated for 2023 Best of the Net
We Call Them Beautiful (Diode Editions, 2019) Winner Diode Editions
2018 Book Prize | AUDIO SELECTIONS | Spanish-language translation of WCTB: forthcoming from Chilean poet Elisa Montesinos; under contract in 2023 with Cuarto Propio
Finalist 2020 First Horizon Finalist, Eric Hoffer Awards; 2018 Beverly Prize and 2017 Sexton Prize from Eyewear Publishing; 2017; BOAAT Poetry Prize (Dean Young, judge); 2017 Autumn House Poetry Prize; (Kimoko Hahn, judge), 2017 Shelterbelt Poetry Prize (Ada Limón, judge); Vassar Miller Prize (2017, Rosanna Warren, judge; 2016, AE Stallings, judge; 2015, Geoffrey Brock, judge; 2011, Lisa Russ Spaar, judge; 2010, J.D. McClatchy, judge); 2014 Kore Press Open Reading; and 2013 Philip Levine Poetry Book Prize (Philip Levine, judge)
The Hasp Tongue (dancing girl press, 2014), dancing girl press chapbook
ANTHOLOGIES
Who Will Speak for America? Edited by Stephanie Feldman and Nathaniel Popkin (Temple University Press, 2018)
Resist Much Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance Edited by Michael Boughn and Kent Johnson (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2017)
All We Can Hold: A Collection of Poetry on Motherhood Edited by Laura Stott (Sage Hill Press, 2016)
The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop Edited by Diane Lockwood (Terrapin Books, 2016)
Oh, Baby! True Stories About Conception, Adoption, Surrogacy, Pregnancy, Labor, and Love Edited by Lee Gutkind and Alice Bradley (Creative Nonfiction, 2015)
TEACHING
2025 Poets House, “City Poet: Writing Ekphrasis” New York, New York
2022 NYU Gallatin, “City Poet,” New York, New York
2020 Catapult, New York, New York
2019 Poets House, “You Are Here: Poems of Place,” New York, New York Catapult, New York, New York
2018 University of Pennsylvania, Adjunct Writing Program Faculty, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2009 Bard High School Early College Queens, English Department Faculty, Queens, New York
2005–2007 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Graduate Student Instructor, Poetry, Fiction, Composition, Ann Arbor, Michigan
OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
LinkedIn Profile
Senior Manager of Communications, Marketing, and Media Strategy for the College Art Association
Director of Communications for International House New York
Director of Communications for New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study
AWARDS & HONORS
2025 Queens Art Fund, New York Foundation for the Arts for Paragones
Can Serrat International Residency, Barcelona, Spain
Bethany Arts Community Poetry Residency, Ossining, New York
2024 Hewnoaks Residency, Lovell, Maine
2023 Writers Room Residency at The Betsy Hotel, Miami, Florida
Editors’ Choice Selection for the 2022 Amelia Gray 2K Contest from CRAFT
Literary for “(up to now separately)” - nominated for 2023 Best of the Net
Flushing Town Hall New Work Grant for QUEENSBOUND
2022 Poet in Residence, NYU Gallatin WetLab on Governors Island
Finalist in Poetry, Sustainable Arts Foundation
2021 Works on Water Poet in Residence on Governors Island, May-November 2021; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency on Governors Island, Jan-April 2021
2019 World Premiere: “Three Rides,” a song cycle by Herschel Garfein based on poems from KC Trommer, Brooklyn Art Song Society’s 2019 Season
2018 Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant for QUEENSBOUND
2016 Pushcart Prize nomination for “Fear Not, Mary”
2015 2015 Fugue Poetry Prize for “Fear Not, Mary,” selected by Kevin Prufer
Finalist for Queens Poet Laureate
2013 Table 4 Writers Foundation Grant for “The Wild Dogs”
2007 Academy of American Poets Prize for “The Hasp Tongue”
2006 Farrar Playwriting Award for “Lessons in Higher English,” University of Michigan
Meader Family Poetry Award for “Learn By Going,” University of Michigan
2004 Prague Summer Program, Prague, Czech Republic
2002 Vermont Studio Center Residency, Johnson, Vermont
SELECTED POETRY
Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day “Self-lit”
AGNI “The Cyclone” - Also featured in Hershel Garfein’s 2023 classical music release, The Layers
Best American Poetry “Off the Roosie”
Blackbird “Black Ice” and “Virtue”
The Common “The Couple”
CRAFT Literary “(up to now separately)” - Editors’ choice selection for the 2022 Amelia Gray 2K Contest; nominated for 2023 Best of the Net
The Georgia Review, “Scene from the New South (1998)” and “Kelly Ann, New London, 1979”
LitHub “First Map”
Poetry Daily “We Call Them Beautiful”
SWWIM “Francesca Woodman (1958-1981)”
PUBLIC PROJECTS AND COLLABORATIONS
ONGOING
2020–With Chilean poet Elisa Montesinos, translation of We Call Them Beautiful into Spanish
2017– Founder and Project Director of QUEENSBOUND
QUEENSBOUND is an online audio project presenting over 60 original poems by, for, and about Queens and offering staged readings on the 7 train, with receptions at The Queens Museum (2018) and Flushing Town Hall (2024) The project uses a Queens-lines-only subway map inspired by Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 subway map to showcase the poems Editorial Board (2019-2024): Pichchenda Bao, Jared Harél, Abeer Y. Hoque, Sherese Francis, and KC Trommer. Full list of contributors: queensbound com
2015– With composer Herschel Garfein, libretto for a 12-poem song cycle featuring poems from We Call Them Beautiful; “Three Rides” song cycle included on Garfien’s 2023 classical album release The Layers
PAST
2021–2023 Poet in Residence on Governors Island
Three residencies: Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s COVID-19 Response Residency Program (2021), Works on Water (2021-2022), and NYU Gallatin’s WetLab (2021-2023)
LMCC - January-April 2021
Through LMCC, I began work on my second collection, Paragones, which looks at the works of female-identifying artists from around the globe. I worked with photographer and fellow LMCC resident Betsy Kenyon on her monograph Slumber, for which I wrote a poem, “through the pinhole, watching,” and have paired photographer Alexa Hoyer with poet Susanne Wise and Hyewon Park with poet Kelly Sullivan to create ekphrastic poems and videos of their work.
Works on Water - April-August 2021
A five-poem cycle, “Readings on Water,” featuring audio recordings accessible via QR codes placed throughout WoWHaus’s Nolan 5B space
NYU Gallatin WetLab - August 2021-December 2023
For “City Poet” at NYU Gallatin, students traveled to Governors Island to use it as a source of inspiration for creating place-based work. The Gallatin WetLab opened up a room on the second floor of 403 Colonel’s Row and created the dedicated space “City of Poems,” allowing visitors to write poems on a butcher block cut out to follow the shape of the NYC skyline.
2020–2023
Curator, Red Door Series at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Jackson Heights, Queens
The Red Door Series was an in-person, non-denominational reading and meditation series that offered poetry and community during the COVID-19 pandemic, begun by poet and priest Spencer Reece. The series ran every week in 2020, on a bimonthly basis in 2021, and every month in 2022, with readers reading a single poem, followed by a 10-minute silent meditation and closing with a second reading of the same poem. The Red Door welcomed over 50 poets to share their work at St. Mark’s Church in Jackson Heights. Readers included emerging and seasoned poets, including Gregory Pardlo, Pádraig Ó Tuama, and Alice Quinn among many others. Full list of readers: https://www.kctrommer.com/collaborations.
2020 With The Queens Museum - Commission for Onassis USA’s “Enter” Exhibition featuring QUEENSBOUND poets, “In the Here and Now” video reading of an exquisite corpse poem.
2017 With The Queens Museum - “Out Loud in Public,” public programming and reading created in response to Mariella Senatore’s collaborative multidisciplinary exhibition Piazza Universale/Social Stages
2015–2019 With Emotive Fruition (now Poetry Well), theater performances of select poems
2010 With NewLights Press - broadside series With artist Iviva Olenick - embroidered poems
ESSAYS, INTERVIEWS, AND PRESS
LitHub “Reading Across America: A Poetry Reading On An NYC Subway Car? On The International Express Through The Immigrant Communities of Queens”
LitHub “How Do We Fix the MFA?: Toward a New Model for Creative Writing Programs”
Queens Council on the Arts: “Listening to the Voices of QUEENSBOUND”
VIDA Review “Report from the Field: Seeing Is Changing” - Personal essay about the failings of the UK publisher Eyewear and its treatment of authors under contract
Poets House: "The Practice of Poetry: Writing Poems of Place with KC Trommer," based on the 2019 Poets House Workshop "You Are Here: Poems of Place."
June 2021 Interview with Emily Everett for The Common Podcast
March 2021 Interview for the Red Door Series Podcast
January 2021 Interview for Urban Omnibus' Dispatch: Poetry for the People, in Public Spaces with Jared Harél and Nadia Q. Ahmad
November 2019 Interview with Rosebud Ben-Oni for her “VERVE {in} VERSE” column for Kenyon Review.
August 2019 Interview for the Truth to Power Show for Radio Free Brooklyn
June 2019 Review of “Three Rides”: “Art song trees grow in Brooklyn with three varied premieres” New York Classical Review
October 2018 Interview for Girls at Library
November 2018 Moody, Thomas. “Tracking the Borough’s Stories” Queens Tribune
September 2015 Harpin, Mary “Interview with Poet KC Trommer” Pen Parentis
Radio Lab’s “The Poetry of ‘Elements’” for Emotive Fruition
September 2012 DeBenedetto, Paul “Jackson Heights Poetry Festival Looking to Expand” DNA Info
October 2012 Leland, John. “Poets Gather in Exile, in Queens” New York Times
February 2011 Trapasso, Claire. “It's the write borough” New York Daily News
January 2010 Chard, Mario “Five Questions with KC Trommer” Sycamore Review
SELECTED RECENT READINGS
Audio recordings of original poems and poetry projects: https://soundcloud.com/kc-trommer
List of readings and performances: https://www.kctrommer.com/events | @kctrommer TikTok
Narrative biography: https://www.kctrommer.com/biography
Poetry at the End of the Line - Virtual Event with the New York Transit Museum
Reading with Sue Landers and KC Trommer - April 2025
Singing Down the Walls - Bethany Arts Community Residency Public Program with H.E. Fisher, Yalonda JD Green, Vanessa Jimenez Gabb, rex renée,, and KC TrommerApril 2025
Westchester launch of the Braving the Body anthology, Hudson Valley Writers Center - July 2024
With Willa Carroll and Tess Taylor at KBG Bar - April 2024
PS 122 Gallery for Alexa Hoyer’s Fallow Frames exhibition - March 2024
Launch of QUEENSBOUND 2024, Flushing-bound 7 train, Queens, New York - March 2024
Escribe Aquí Reading, Hosted by Project Curator Caridad Moro-Gronlier and Nicole Tallman, Poetry Ambassador, Miami Dade County Readings by Veronica Corpuz, Alexis Ivy, Jen Karetnick, Alina Pleskova, Juliet Romero, and KC Trommer - September 2023
Pioneer Works May 2023 Second Sundays Reading for Betsy Kenyon’s SLUMBERMay 2023
Jefferson Market Library for Andrea Carter Brown's September 12 - September 2023
Red Door Series, Wednesday at 6:30 pm Final reader for the 2021-2022 season of the reading and meditation series held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Jackson Heights, Queens.- May 2022
Launch of Ananda Lima’s Mother/land and Tracy Fuad’s about: blank - October 2022
Book Culture, with Tara Skurtu, Rosebud Ben-Oni, & Leah Umansky - October 2022
Brooklyn Book Festival - QUEENSBOUND with Pichchenda Bao, Sharese Francis, Abeer Y Hoque, Joseph O Legaspi, Rob Ostrom, and Sahar Romani - October 2022
NYU Gallatin’s Big Walk on Governors Island - September 2022