Natasha Sajé

Natasha Sajé’s first book of poems, Red Under the Skin (Pittsburgh, 1994), was chosen from over 900 manuscripts to win the Agnes Lynch Starrett prize, and was later awarded the Towson State Prize in Literature.  Her second collection of poems, Bend, was published by Tupelo Press in 2004 and awarded the Utah Book Award in Poetry.  Poems in her third book, Vivarium (Tupelo Press, 2014) received the Alice Fay di Castagnola award from the Poetry Society of America. The book won the 15 Bytes Award. Her book of essays about poetry, Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory, was published by the University of Michigan press also in 2014. Terroir: Love, Out of Place, a memoir-in-essays, is forthcoming from Trinity University Press in 2020.

Sajé was born in Munich, Germany, in 1955 and grew up in New York City and Northern New Jersey. She earned a B.A. from the University of Virginia (1976), an M.A. from Johns Hopkins (1980), and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park (1995), for a study titled, "'Artful Artlessness': Reading the Coquette in the Novel, 1724-1913."  Her honors include the Bannister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College, the Robert Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, the 2002 Campbell Corner Poetry Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship to Slovenia, a Camargo Fellowship in France, and grants from the states of Maryland and Utah. Sajé was a Maryland poet-in-the-schools 1989-1998.  Her poems, reviews, and essays appear in many periodicals, including The New York Times, The Henry James Review; Kenyon Review; Missouri Review; New Republic; Paris Review; Poetry; Rhino; American Poetry Review; Ploughshares; Copper Nickel; and The Writer’s Chronicle. Sajé has been teaching in the low residency Vermont College MFA in Writing Program since 1996, and since 1998 has been a professor of English at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, where she directs the Weeks Poetry Series

Works

(Four Poems from Vivarium, Tupelo, 2014)

Bibliography

Books of Poems

  • The Future Will Call You Something Else (under consideration)
  • Vivarium (2014, Tupelo Press) 15 Bytes Book Award, Alice Fay di Castagnola Award
  • Bend  (2004, Tupelo Press) Utah Book Award for Poetry
  • Red Under the Skin (1994, U of Pittsburgh Press, Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize)

Creative Nonfiction

  • Terroir: Love, Out of Place, Trinity University Press, 2020.

Criticism 

  • Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory (2014, University of Michigan Press)

Additional Info

  • Region: Wasatch Front
  • Genre: Poetry, Nonfiction
  • Tags: Women, LGBTQI