Oliver Baez Bendorf

Oliver Baez Bendorf was born on June 21, 1987,^[1] in Iowa City, Iowa.^[2] His poems sometimes feature the landscape of his childhood,^[3] and his writing about returning to Iowa for a visit while transitioning genders was published in Buzzfeed.^[4] He graduated with a BA from the University of Iowa in 2009. In 2013, he earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he met his teachers Lynda Barry,^[5] Quan Barry, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Jesse Lee Kercheval, and Ronald Wallace.^[6] In 2015, he received an MA in Library and Information Studies, also from the University of Wisconsin-Madison,^[7] where he worked with The Little Magazine Collection, one of the most extensive of its kind in the United States.^[8][9] Bendorf is a fellow of the CantoMundo Poetry Workshop.

Bendorf's poetry publications include the book The Spectral Wilderness^[10], selected by Mark Doty for the 2013 Stan & Tom Wick Poetry Prize, and released by Kent State University Press in 2015,^[11] and Advantages of Being Evergreen, which was selected for the 2018 Open Book Poetry Competition from Cleveland State University Poetry Center and published in September 2019. ^[12] American poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi called Advantages of Being Evergreen "an essential book for our time and for all time" and wrote that "Baez Bendorf is making a future grammar for the moment all of our vessels are free and held. I am living for the world these poems anticipate… This is a book of the earth’s abiding wonder. And the body’s unbreakable ability to bloom."^[13]

His third book of poems, Consider the Rooster, will be published by Nightboat Books in 2024.^[14]

His work has appeared in publications including Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day,^[15] American Poetry Review,^[16] BOMB,^[17] Black Warrior Review,^[18] jubilat,^[19] Poetry Magazine,^[20] and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics.^[21] He has published essays^[22] and comics poetry,^[23] in addition to poetry, and his poetry has been translated into Russian by Dmitry Kuzmin.^[24]

He has taught poetry and creative writing at University of Wisconsin-Madison, 826DC, Madison Public Library, District of Columbia Public Schools, Mount Holyoke College, Wick Poetry Center, Kalamazoo College,^[25] Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference,^[26] and elsewhere.^[27]

Bendorf is a transgender man, and has used his work to discuss gender identity and transition, sometimes in humorous ways.^[28][29] He is of German, Southern Italian, and Puerto Rican (Afro-Taíno and Spanish) ancestry.^[30]

In 2020, Bendorf was awarded the Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from Publishing Triangle, presented to an LGBTQ writer who has shown exceptional talent and promise.^[31][32] Bendorf was a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.^[33] In 2021, he joined the poetry faculty of the low-residency MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.^[34]

• 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry^[35]
• 2020 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, Publishing Triangle^[36]
• 2019 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series Prize, Seven Kitchens Press^[37]
• 2018 Open Book Poetry Competition, Cleveland State University Poetry Center^[38]
• 2017-2018 Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing^[39]
• 2015 New American Poets, Poetry Society of America. Selected by Natalie Diaz^[40]
• 2013-14 Doug Fir Fiction Award, The Bear Deluxe. Selected by Lidia Yuknavitch^[41]
• 2013 Stan & Tom Wick Poetry Prize, The Spectral Wilderness, Kent State University Press, 2015. Selected by Mark Doty^[42]
• 2011-13 Martha Meier Renk Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Poetry at University of Wisconsin-Madison^[43]

• Poem: "I Just Chose My Place and Let the Circle Form Around Me". The Nation. 2021.^[44]
• Poem: “Impervious”. The Cincinnati Review. 2020. ^[45]
• Poem: “River I Dream About”. American Poetry Review. 2020.^[46]
• Poem: "Settler/Unsettled". BOMB Magazine. 2019.^[47]
• Book: Advantages of Being Evergreen. Cleveland State University Poetry Center. 2019. ISBN 9781880834008.
• Book: The Spectral Wilderness: Poems. Kent State University Press. 2015. ISBN 9781606352113.