An Introduction to Elizabeth A.I. Powell by Kristina Marie Darling


Elizabeth A.I. Powell is an exciting voice in contemporary literature. An acclaimed novelist as well a skilled poet, Powell showcases an enviable command of narrative, suspense, and dramatic tension in this gorgeously crafted sonnet crown. Perhaps it is Powell’s purposeful withholding, this deliberate and artful obscuring of plot elements, that creates such powerful momentum as the reader passed through the various rooms of her linked sequence. Indeed, Powell shows us that the techniques of fiction can work in tandem with inherited poetic forms, charged and surprising enjambments, and of course, her trademark lyricism,

Elizabeth A.I. Powell was born in New York City. She earned her BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of the poetry collections The Republic of Self (2001), which won a New Issues Poetry Prize, and Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter or Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances (2016), winner of an Anhinga-Robert Dana Prize for Poetry and a “Books We Love 2016” pick by the New Yorker.

Powell is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a grant from the Vermont Arts Council, and a fellowship from Yaddo. An editor of Green Mountains Review, she is associate professor of writing and literature at Northern Vermont University and on the faculty of the low-residency MFA programs at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and the Vermont College of Fine Arts.