Iris Cushing

Diane di Prima Fellow

Iris Cushing is a scholar, educator, editor, and poet living in the Catskill mountains. She is the co-editor, with Jason Weiss, of Mary Norbert Korte’s Jumping into the American River: New and Selected Poems (Argos Books/TKS, 2023). Her poems and critical writings have appeared in numerous publications, including Granta, Fence, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day series. Recently the author of The First Books of David Henderson and Mary Korte: A Research (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020), and Into the Long Long Time: How Mary Korte Saved the Redwoods (Ink Cap Press, 2019). Recipient of the Diane di Prima Fellowship from the Center for the Humanities from 2016-2018; edited three chapbooks for the Lost & Found Poetics Document Initiative: Diane di Prima: Prometheus Unbound as a Magickal Working (Series VIII) Bobbie Louise Hawkins: The Sounding Word and Judy Grahn: Selections from Blood, Bread and Roses (Series VI). Iris holds a Ph.D in English from the CUNY Graduate Center, and authored a dissertation titled Pierce and Pine: Diane di Prima, Mary Norbert Korte and the Meeting of Matter and Spirit