Cass Donish

Cass Donish is a queer poet and writer from California. Their third poetry collection, Your Dazzling Death, is forthcoming from Knopf in 2024. 

They are the author of two previous poetry collections: The Year of the Femme (University of Iowa Press, 2019), chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy as winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Award; and Beautyberry (Slope Editions, 2018). Their nonfiction chapbook, On the Mezzanine (Gold Line Press, 2019), was chosen by Maggie Nelson as winner of the Gold Line Press Chapbook Competition. 

An interdisciplinary writer, educator, editor, and performer, Donish has writing appearing or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, Poem-a-Day, Texas Review, Tupelo Quarterly, VICE, and elsewhere. A founding editor of The Spectacle, Donish earned an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where they received an Olin Fellowship and served as the Junior Fellow in Poetry. With degrees from the University of Washington and the University of Oregon, Donish has taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Missouri, Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and Ashland University's low-residency MFA program. Their current writing explores grief, queer love, suicide loss, ecology, and young widowhood. They live in Columbia, Missouri with their partner and three cats.