Faculty & Staff Bios

PHOTO BY MERCEDES ZAPATA

BTL FACULTY

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT.

Poupeh Missaghi is a writer, a translator both into and out of Persian, an editor, and an educator. She holds a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Denver, an MA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA in translation studies. Her debut novel trans(re)lating house one was published by Coffee House Press in February 2020. Her nonfiction, fiction, and translations have appeared in numerous journals, and she has several books of translation published in Iran. I’ll Be Strong for You, her translation of Iranian author Nasim Marashi’s novel, is forthcoming in spring 2021. As an editor, she worked for many years with Asymptote and is coeditor of Matters of Feminist Practice from Belladonna* Collaborative. She is currently a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Writing at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, a faculty mentor at the low-residency MFA of Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, as well as a writing consultant at Baruch College, CUNY, NY. BTL FACULTY

YOUTH PROGRAMS COORDINATOR

ALISA WEINSTEIN received a BFA in Drama and MA in Educational Theatre from New York University, and a PhD in Anthropology from Syracuse University; she also studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and conducted dissertation research in India on a FulbrightNehru scholarship. Among her other writing, she authored scripts for India’s Sesame Street, Galli Galli Sim Sim, and is currently at work on an ethnography of tailors working in Jaipur, India. A co-founder of Home Ec. Workshop in Iowa City, she often teaches knitting and sewing to crafters of all

CAITLIN PLATHE received her BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. An alumna of IWP’s Between the Lines program, she has held several assistantship positions at IWP for the last four years. She is also the author of I Am No Plath, a volume of poems.

PROGRAM ASSISTANT

BTL SUMMER ASSISTANT

SARAH ADLER received a BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently pursuing her MFA in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her work explores a variety of topics, including identity-making on the Internet, the role of contemporary art in society, and gendered modes of interpersonal communication.

GEORGIE FEHRINGER received a BA in Creative Writing from The Evergreen State College. She is an MFA candidate and Iowa Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. Her writing is experimental poetic prose with a focus on physical form; it has appeared or is forthcoming from The Black Warrior Review, TIMBER, and Entropy Magazine. She is Co-Creator and lead editor at Pixel and Fragment press and has a love for all things book binding letterpress and design.

BTL ANTHOLOGY EDITOR