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Leila Chatti's latest book of poetry is her collaboration with Dorianne Laux, "The Mothers: Poems in Conversation & A Conversation," which was published in March 2022.
Her first full-length poetry collection, "Deluge," reveals her personal trauma with a tumor that caused her to bleed without stopping. It deals with her Tunisian-American heritage with a Muslim father and Catholic mother, concepts of disease as punishment, and the essentials of womanhood. “To write a series of poems out of extreme illness is a bracing accomplishment indeed," wrote one critic in the New York Times. Her previous chapbook, "Tunsiya/Amrikiya," deals with the problems of having roots on both sides of the Atlantic and the consequent eternal disconnection from one side or the other. "Ebb," her first chapbook, is now available in the 11-volume chapbook set "New-Generation African Poets: Tano." Leila has won scholarships, grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tin House Writers' Workshop, the Frost Place and the Key West Literary Seminar, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Wisconsin Institure for Creative Writing and Cleveland State University. Her poems have been published in such spots as Ploughshares, Tin House, the American Poetry Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Kenyon Review Online, the New York Times Magazine and many others. Her work has won recognition from, among others, the Pushcart Prize. Leila teaches at the University of Wisconsin. She earned her BA at Michigan State University and her MFA from M.F.A. from North Carolina State University, where she won the Academy of American Poets Prize. For more about Leila, see her website, leilachatti.com. |
