Poet and educator Paul Genega is the author of seven full-length poetry collections and seven chapbooks. Most recently, he published Outtakes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2023 (Salmon Poetry, 2023).
Over Genega’s five-decade career, his work has appeared in literary magazines and journals including Southwest Review, Poetry, Kansas Quarterly, Stillwater Review, North American Review, Verse Daily, and Narrative Northeast. His poetry has also been anthologized in Like Light (Bright Hill Press, 2017) and Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (Salmon, 2010). Perhaps, a 1985 portfolio of his poems with letterpress etchings by artist Aaron Fink, is held in the permanent collections of multiple American museums.
With Emmy Award–winning composer, writer, and documentarian Patricia Lee Stotter, Genega co-authored the full-length musical play Haven’t We Met?, which was presented in a full production sketch at the Writers’ Theater in New York, and the multimedia piece Paging Doctor Faustus, which appeared in a staged reading at FiveMyles Gallery in Brooklyn. His poem “The Self-Made Man and the Moon” was turned into a robotic theater piece by Barry Brian Werger at the University of Southern California’s robotics lab, which then toured the United States and abroad. As part of ARTS By the People’s Moving Words project, his poem “Pharaoh” was animated by Omer Mizrahi in a film that premiered at the Animex Festival in Tel Aviv. His poetry was also included in writer and producer Katja Dryer’s play Ophelia Comes to Brooklyn, which premiered in Brussels and toured Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.
A six-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Genega has been honored with awards including New York Quarterly’s Lucille Medwick Award, The Literary Review’s Charles Angoff Award, and the “Discovery”/The Nation Prize. His honors include a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has performed his poetry widely at poetry festivals, libraries, bookstores, and other institutions in the United States and beyond.
Genega has been editor of Three Mile Harbor Press since 2014. He has also worked as a research assistant for the Jackson Pollock Catalogue Raisonne and as a contributing editor of The Columbia Encyclopedia. He is Professor Emeritus at Bloomfield College of Montclair State University, where he founded and directed the creative writing program, served as Chair of the Humanities Division, and taught literature and writing for many years.
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More Paul Genega
Audio: Listen to an interview with Genega on Yale Radio: WYBCx
Text: Read "Neighbors" by Genega in Poetry
Video: Watch the virtual launch of Genega's Outtakes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2023