About Susan Firer
Susan Firer’s sixth and most recent book, The Transit of Venus, was named as an “Outstanding Work of Poetry” by the Wisconsin Library Association's 2017 Literary Awards Committee. Her previous books have been awarded the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize, the Posner Award, and the Backwaters Prize. She is a recipient of a Milwaukee County Artist Fellowship, a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship, the Lorine Niedecker Award, and in 2009 she was given the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Distinguished Alumnus Award. In 2015, Firer was awarded a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry.
She has poems in numerous anthologies including Best American Poetry; Visting Dr. Williams: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of William Carlos Williams (University of Iowa Press); The Cento: A collection of Collage Poems (Red Hen Press); and The Book of Irish American Poetry: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (University of Notre Dame Press). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Ms.(Magazine), Chicago Tribune, Chicago Review, jubilat, Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, New American Writing, and others.
From 2008–2010 she was Poet Laureate of the City of Milwaukee. From 2008–2014, she edited the Shepherd Express online poetry column. She is Adjunct Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.