Sophie Cabot Black

Sophie Cabot Black’s first poetry collection, The Misunderstanding of Nature, received the Poetry Society of America’s First Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Poetry. The Descent, a second collection of poems, received the 2005 Connecticut Book Award, was also nominated for the 2005 Colorado Book Award, and was subsequently chosen as a “hot pick” on MSNBC’s program, Topic A with Tina Brown.

Her collection The Exchange (2013), received critical acclaim, including a starred Publisher’s Weekly, and on All Things Considered was reviewed as “the book for you”, while Billy Collins in the New York Times has said “ ...she's concocted a way of speaking in poetry that's very fresh and daring."  Her latest book, Geometry of the Restless Herd, arrives in May of 2024. 

NPR calls her “a poet’s poet”; she has been awarded several fellowships, including at the Macdowell Colony and the Radcliffe Institute, and appears at national literary festivals such as the Los Angeles Times Book Festival and the Dodge Poetry Festival. She has taught at Rutgers, The New School, Columbia University, the 92nd St Y in New York, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.