Natalie Shapero
Poet Natalie Shapero was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. She earned her BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, her MFA in Poetry from Ohio State University, and her JD from the University of Chicago.
Shapero has published three poetry full-lengths: No Object (Saturnalia, 2013), winner of the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award; Hard Child (Copper Canyon, 2017), which was shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and Popular Longing (Copper Canyon, 2021), selected by the New York Public Library as one of its Best Books for Adults 2021. Her poetry often embraces dark and difficult topics, with the infusion of a wit that sheds bright light on the shadowy concerns she approaches. rob mclennan describes her poems as “pearls of logic, urgency, and contemplation, composed of worn irritation and deadpan delivery.”
Shapero’s writing has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Poetry, Granta, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and a Kenyon Review Fellowship.
Formerly an editor at the Kenyon Review, Shapero has served as Professor of the Practice of Poetry at Tufts University. She was also a Steven Gey Fellow with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, performing civil rights litigation. She currently teaches at UC Irvine.
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More Natalie Shapero
Video: Shapero reads in the Kenyon Review Reading Series
Text: Shapero on her poem “Lying Is Getting” at Poetry Society of America
Audio: Shapero reads her poem "Sunshower" at the Poetry Foundation podcast