Elena Karina Byrne is the 26-year Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and Literary Programs Director for the historic Ruskin Art Club. She also works as a freelance lecturer and book editor. As the twelve-year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, she developed the “Act of the Poet” reading series at the Chateau Marmont Hotel while launching events with the Los Angeles MTA’s Metro Art for the Poetry in Motion™ program. Elena also curated interdisciplinary programs for the GRI at the J. Paul Getty Center, MOCA, the Craft Contemporary Museum, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, The West Hollywood Book Fair, The Clark Library, and USC’s Doheny Memorial Library, among others.
Elena served as a final judge for the 2022 Laurel Prize, the 2016-2018 Kate and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards in poetry, and PEN’s “Best of the West” prize. Teaching artist and lecture positions include Poetry School (UK), the 2018-2019 Georgia Circuit tour of ten universities, Poetry Barn, Cambridge University, Sidney Sussex College, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, Claremont Graduate University, University of Southern California, The New School, Idyllwild Arts Academy, Brentwood School, The Los Angeles Film School, Todos Santos Writing Workshops, and elsewhere.
Elena’s poetry books include If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn, 2021), No Don’t (What Books Press, 2020), Squander (Omnidawn, 2016), MASQUE (Tupelo Press, 2008), and The Flammable Bird (Zoo Press/Tupelo Press, 2002). A Pushcart Prize recipient, her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews can be found in Best American Poetry, Poetry, Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Kyoto Journal, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Volt, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Verse Daily, Poetry International, Poetry Daily, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, New American Writing, Interlitq, Plume, The Adroit Journal, LARB, The Oxford Review, Yale Review, Western Humanities Review, The Eloquent Poem anthology, Republic of Apples Democracy of Oranges: New Eco–Poetry from China and the United States Anthology, Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies, BOMB, and elsewhere. Elena’s writing screenplays while completing her collection of hybrid essays entitled Voyeur Hour: Poetry, Art, Film, & Desire.
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