Emma Winsor Wood

Emma Winsor Wood

Class of 2012, Modern Europe
Poet, editor, and Ph.D. student in Literature at the University of California Santa Cruz
Emma Winsor Wood

Thesis Title: Fleeing the Poetic Convent: Elena Shvarts's Works and Days and Problems of Female Authorship in the Late-Soviet Literary Underground

What Now: I have my MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and I am PhD candidate in Literature at the University of California Santa Cruz, where I am working on completing a dissertation on a type of nonfiction currently being written by women that is at the intersection of poetry and the essay—or what I call the lyric diary. I still remember Jorie Graham telling me, when I was at Harvard, that she thought I would publish a book of poems one day—and I'm thrilled that I finally have! The Real World came out at the end of 2021.

But poetry does not pay bills. To do that, I work as the editor-in-chief of Stone Soup, the literary magazine for kids 14 and under, and I work as a college admissions essay counselor. I recently (co)wrote a book about this process with my colleague: The Complete College Essay Handbook.

I also utilized my Harvard/Hist & Lit Russian while co-translating A Failed Performance: Short Plays and Scenes by Daniil Kharms and translated a few poems by the Soviet poet Elena Shvarts for an anthology being compiled by BC professor Thomas Epstein.
 

What Next: I hope to finish my dissertation soon and publish another book of poems—I have a backlog of manuscripts!

Follow Me: @emmawinsorwood (Twitter)

Read More: Find more of my poetry and essays at emmawinsorwood.com.