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 an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I wrote my dissertation on a type of nonfiction currently being written by women at the intersection of poetry and the essay—or what I call the lyric diary. I’m now a Lecturer at the University of Central Florida, where I teach creative writing.

I still remember Jorie Graham telling me, when I was at Harvard, that she thought I would publish a book of poems one day. I’ve now published two: The Real World (BlazeVOX, 2021) and Preferred Internal Landscape (Ornithopter Press, 2025). I did make use of my Harvard Hist & Lit Russian, too: I co-translated Daniil Kharms’s A Failed Performance: Short Plays and Scenes (Plays Inverse, 2018).

I also work as a college admissions essay counselor and co-wrote The Complete College Essay Handbook with a colleague.

Follow Me: @emmawinsorwood (Twitter)

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