About
Recent News
Cristin’s Poetry is Selected As Poem-of-the-Week on Verse Daily
Cristin is honored that the lit site Verse Daily chose her poem, “December,” as poem of the week of May 14th, 2012 for its Web Weekly series, which highlights the best of poetry published online. The poem was originally published by the online lit journal Muzzle. Click here for the Verse Daily’s official Web Weekly page.
Cristin Interviewed in Monkeybicycle
The indie lit journal Monkeybicyle interviewed Cristin about her second collection of poetry, Hot Teen Slut, on its popularblog. Indie lit’s own (and Mud Luscious founder) J.A. Tyler asked the questions, which covered topics like love vs. porn, poetry vs. fiction and life after smut-writing. He also wrote of the book that “porn has never been so poetically charged, never rendered with such humor and careful control, making Hot Teen Slut not only a fantastic book but a unique one in every sense of the word.” To read the full interview, please click here.
About
Short Bio: Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is the author of five books of poetry (Dear Future Boyfriend, Hot Teen Slut, Working Class Represent, Oh, Terrible Youth and Everything is Everything) as well as the nonfiction book, Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, which Billy Collins wrote “leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature.” Her recent awards include the ArtsEdge Writer-In-Residency at the University of Pennsylvania (2010-2011), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (2011) and the Amy Clampitt Residency (2013).
For the truly curious, here’s the longer story:
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz (b. 1978) was born and raised in Philadelphia. In 1996, she graduated from Central High School of Philadelphia, and moved to New York City to attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She was a sophomore at NYU when she was first introduced to poetry slams by her classmate, Beau Sia. In 1998, Cristin co-founded the NYC-Urbana Poetry Slam, a weekly reading series dedicated to showcasing the most innovative voices in poetry. NYC-Urbana has captured the National Slam Championship title three times and won the first ever Group Piece Nationals, which celebrates multi-voice poems. The NYC-Urbana Poet Slam is still held weekly at NYC’s famed Bowery Poetry Club.
After college, Cristin worked as an editor for the “Adult” section for online portal About.com (serving as inspiration for her book, Hot Teen Slut), slung coffee as the founding cafe manager for the Bowery Poetry Club and served as a rights manager at the Artists Rights Society.
In July 2010, she was named the 2010-2011 ArtsEdge Writer-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, where she spent the year researching and writing a book on Thomas Dent Mütter, founder of the Philadelphia’s (in)famous Mütter Museum. It was during this residency year that she was also awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.
Aptowicz currently is living in Austin, TX, with her partner, poet Shappy Seasholtz, and their two rescue two dachshunds: a nine-pound chocolate wire-haired named Max Bialystock and an eight-pound silver dapple short-haired named Alvy Singer.
Cristin continues to perform and lecture internationally & nationally, including residencies with or performances at the Sydney Opera House, the Gasworks Art Complex (Melbourne Australia), Joe’s Pub (at NYC’s Public Theatre), the Largo Theatre (Los Angeles) and universities & colleges, such Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College and Amhearst College, among many others. Her poetry and non-fiction has been published in various journals, including Rattle, McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Pank, La Petite Zine, decomP, Umbrella, The Other Journal, Danse Macabre, Conduit, Barrelhouse and Monkeybicycle, among others…
Her most recent awards include a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and the 2013 Amy Clampitt Residency.
For more information on forthcoming gigs, recent press and/or her schedule of performances, please see here or write aptowicz@yahoo.com.
