Profile
Syd Zolf has published six books of poetry, including a Selected Poetry, Janey’s Arcadia, Neighbour Procedure, and Human Resources, and six chapbooks. Their theoretical text, No One's Witness: A Monstrous Poetics was released by Duke University Press in 2021 and was a finalist for the 2022 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism, presented by the Poetry Foundation. Zolf's poetry and essays has been widely published in journals and anthologies worldwide and translated into French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Other awards include a 2018 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and finalist for several other prizes, including two Lambda Literary Awards. Art videos Zolf has written and/or directed have screened at venues such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, White Cube Bermondsey, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. They have received over thirty poetry, video, nonfiction, and academic research grants and fellowships from institutions including the Leeway Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. They hold an MFA from The New School, where they organized the first collaborative MFA in Creative Writing ever, and a PhD in Philosophy, Art and Social Thought from the European Graduate School. Zolf spent many years organizing writing projects with trans youth, incarcerated people, and other communities. Their literary papers are housed at York University Archives and Simon Fraser University Special Collections.