Eva Salzman

Eva Salzman’s books include Double Crossing: new & selected poems (Bloodaxe, 2004), which was awarded a Poetry Book Society recommendation, and Women’s Work: modern women poets writing in English (Seren, 2008), co-edited with Amy Wack, an anthology which bridges the British/American/Ireland divides, as Brooklyn-born Salzman does herself. She has given readings, talks and held fellowships at Columbia University, Barnard and Wesleyan Writers’ Conference in America, and at Villa Mont Noir in France. A recipient of a Society of Authors Cholmondeley award, she has been awarded Arts Council grants for poetry and fiction.

Her libretti and lyrics have been performed in Europe, at Monterey Jazz Festival and at King’s Place, Huddersfield Festival, English National Opera studio and Buxton Opera. BBC Radio has broadcast her stories, which also appear in the British Council’s New Writing 9 and 10 (Vintage/Picador). The Guardian, Independent and Poetry Review have published her essays, features and reviews.

A known children’s teacher, she specialises in cross-arts and multidisciplinary projects. Her work is influenced by dual nationality, her performance-arts training, a polymathic background, science studies at Stuyvesant High School (where Frank McCourt was her teacher), odd jobs supporting her writing habit, and by an environmental activist mother and composer/naturalist father. A residency at Springhill prison and RLF fellowships at Warwick University and Ruskin College, Oxford inspired the compilation of True to Life: memoirs from the working-class college (Heaventree Press), which illustrates a lesser- known Oxford and her fascination with exiles and outsiders. She tries to dance salsa or swing at least once-weekly.