Writing • Betsy Fagin

. . . . : : : Betsy’s everyday writing is available online at tomorrow never happens : : : . . . .

Fires Seen From Space, Betsy Fagin
Winter Editions — self-driving
Autumn House, 2025

books:

self-driving winner of Autumn House Poetry Prize (Autumn House Press, 2025)
Fires Seen From Space (Winter Editions, 2024)
All is Not Yet Lost (B elladonna*, 2015)
Names Disguised (Make Now Books, 2014)

selected chapbooks:

resistance is beautiful (therethen, 2019)
the science seemed so solid (dusie kollektiv, 2011)
Poverty Rush (Three Sad Tigers, 2011)
Belief Opportunity (Big Game Books, 2008)
rosemary stretch (dusie e/chapbook, 2006)
For every solution there is a problem (Open 24 Hours, 2003)

selected journal publications:

anthologies:

Letters to the Future: BLACK WOMEN / Radical WRITING, Hunt & Martin eds,. 2018, Kore Press
The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare, Legault & Cohen eds., 2012, Nightboat Book s
Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days, Zucker & Greenberg eds., 2010, University of Iowa Press
Not for Mothers Onl y Wagner & Wolff eds., 2007, F ence Books
(the invisible city) Durand ed., 2001, Erato Press
The Booglit Reader, Kirschenbaum ed., 2000, Boog Press

reviews:

Jacob Kahn on Fires Seen from Space in the Poetry Project Newsletter (#279) :

“As these hells harden all around us, Fagin’s poems become the site for an ongoing praxis of diagnosis and resistance that continues the intersectional work she has cultivated across her poetry and public projects. Fires Seen From Space is likewise imbued with an activist’s awareness of the interlocking systems that enforce our current nation-state hell of oligarchy and ethnonationalism, as well as the possible strategies for intervention.”

The Volta Blog on Names Disguised

Publishers Weekly on All is not yet lost:

“Fagin negotiates between structural powers and the revolution(s) brewing inside, recognizing in turn the contradictions in anything that might seem like an answer. This is a book of intricate operation on every level, from conception to line, from diction to affect. As such, the poems only reveal their fullness through sustained engagement. Fagin’s strange, beautiful music, however, is evidence that the rewards of such engagement are as well-earned as they are plentiful.”
– Publishers Weekly, 6/15/2015

Review of Letters to the Future: Black WOMEN / Radical WRITING:

“In a way, for Fagin, Mullen, and a host of other contributors, language turns material. By listening for phonetic links between words and blending modes of communication, these writers steep themselves in the work of undoing the dualisms between private and public, personal and political, that are built into language and provide us with ready-made ways of making meaning.”
—from Ben Rutherfurd’s review of Letters to the Future: Black WOMEN / Radical WRITING, edited by Erica Hunt and Dawn Lundy Martin (Kore Press): Under A Warm Green Linden, 12/20/2018

other writing:

tomorrow never happens (2025)
“Perfection” in Dream Closet, Burgess ed., 2015, S ecretary Press
“In Their Own Words” feature at Poetry Society of America
Futurepo st r esponse to Camille Roy’s Sherwood Forest

Occupy Wall Street Library:

New Yorker Book Bench article about Occupy Wall Street Library
Library Journal article
G rub Street article
Atlantic Wire article here and another one here
A lterNet article, 10 years later from Amy Goodman, “Another world is possible’: How Occupy Wall Street reshaped politics and kicked off a new era of protest”
T he Brooklyn Ink
American Libraries, “A Library Occupies the Heart of the Occupy Movement“

Although there are some inaccuracies we haven’t been able to edit out, more information and links about the People’s
Library are available on Wikipedia.

Better, go directly to the source: The People’s Library.