Cyrus Cassells

Cyrus Cassells is the 2021 Texas Poet Laureate. Among his honors: a Guggenheim fellowship, the National Poetry Series, a Lambda Literary Award, a Lannan Literary Award, two NEA grants, a Pushcart Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award. His 2018 volume, The Gospel According to Wild Indigo, was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award, and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas, translated from the Catalan, was awarded the Texas Institute of Letters’ Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translated Book of 2018 and 2019. He was nominated for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism for his film and television reviews in The Washington Spectator. His latest book is The World That the Shooter Left Us (Four Way Books: Feb. 2022). He teaches in the M. F. A. program at Texas State University and received the 2021 Presidential Award for Scholarly/Creative Activities, one of the university’s highest honors.