Kristina Marie Darling is a poet, essayist, and critic.  She holds a doctorate from the Poetics Program at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo, as well as an M.F.A. from New York University. 

A 2023 Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Darling is the author of thirty-nine books, which include Look to Your Left:  A Feminist Poetics of Spectacle, available from the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics at the University of Akron Press; Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Women’s Poetry, newly released from Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group; Collaborative Poetry in the New Century, forthcoming from Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group; Silence in Contemporary Poetry, which will be published in hardcover by Clemson University Press in the United States and Liverpool University Press in the United Kingdom; Silent Refusal:  Essays on Contemporary Feminist Writing, just launched from Black Ocean; Daylight Has Already Come:  Selected Poems 2014 – 2020, which was published by Black Lawrence Press; Angel of the North, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry; two career retrospectives, also forthcoming from Salmon Poetry; Je Suis L’Autre:  Essays & Interrogations, which launched from C&R Press and was named one of the “Best Books of 2017” by The Brooklyn Rail; and DARK HORSE:  Poems, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and is also available from C&R Press.  

Her hybrid collaboration with Carol Guess was launched in 2022 from Persea Books.  Penguin Random House Canada also published a Canadian edition.  Selections from this collaborative work are currently being set to music by acclaimed composer Dale Trumbore and will be performed in several cities across the country thanks to a grant from Chamber Music America through their Classical Commissioning Program, with additional generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.   In 2022, Dr. Darling also signed a multi-book deal, in which her out-of-print titles will be reissued by Dzanc Books.

Additionally, Dr. Darling is the editor of several anthologies, which include Open House:  Conversations With Writers About Community, forthcoming in 2025 from Tupelo Press; Trespassing in the Archive:  Poetry in Conversation with History, forthcoming from Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group; Bryher’s Influence on Modernist Writing, also forthcoming from Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group; Four Quartets:  Poetry in the Pandemic, which she co-edited with Jeffrey Levine for Tupelo Press; and The Best of Tupelo Quarterly, which just launched from Tupelo Press.  

Dr. Darling’s most recent poems appear in The Harvard Review, Poetry International, New American Writing, Nimrod, Passages North, The Mid-American Review, and on the Academy of American Poets’ website, Poets.org.  Dr. Darling has published essays in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Lit Hub, The Millions, Agni, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, and Gulf Coast, where she served as Guest Blogger-in-Residence.  In 2022, she was one of the inaugural winners of the Zachary Doss Friends in Letters Memorial Fellowship.  

Her work has been recognized with three residencies at Yaddo, where she has held the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency for a Poet and the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry, both of which are endowed residencies awarded, by internal committee nomination only, to recognize outstanding contributions to the arts; a Fundación Valparaíso fellowship to live and work in Spain; a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, funded by the Heinz Foundation; an artist-in-residence position at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris; ten residencies at the American Academy in Rome; an artist-in-residence fellowship for faculty at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; an appointment at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica di Venezia, which she has held on three occasions; a Civita Institute Fellowship; a Villa Lena Foundation Fellowship; two grants from the Whiting Foundation; a Morris Fellowship in the Arts; a Faber Residency in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities, which she received on two separate occasions; an artist-in-residence position with the Andorran Ministry of Culture; an Elizabeth Ireland Graves Foundation Fellowship from Le Moulin à Nef; and the Dan Liberthson Prize from the Academy of American Poets, which she received on three separate occasions; among many other awards and honors.  In 2022 and 2023, she was selected for an invitational residency at the Ionion Center for the Arts & Culture, which was awarded in collaboration with the Greek Ministry of Culture and the State of Kefalonia.   

Dr. Darling has also been awarded artist-in-residence positions at the Millay Colony for the Arts, where she has served two terms as a poetry juror; the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts; the Wallace Stegner House; the Writer’s Room at the Betsy Hotel — South Beach, where she served as writer-in-residence on three occasions; the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, where she has held multiple residencies; Cassis A.I.R.; the Seaside Institute’s Escape to Create Artist-in-Residence Program; S.I.M./The Association of Icelandic Artists, where she served as Writer-in-Residence; Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris; the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where she has served as writer-in-residence on numerous occasions; the Caldera Foundation for the Arts; the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences; the Edward F. Albee Foundation; the I-Park Foundation; the Brush Creek Center for the Arts; Willapa Bay AiR; the Ucross Foundation; the Jentel Foundation for the Arts; the Ragdale Foundation, where she has held multiple residencies; the Santa Fe Art Institute; the Vermont Studio Center; and many other art centers around the world.  

A former Pabst Cultural Endowment Fellow at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the recipient of grants from Harvard University’s Kittredge Fund, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, the Ora Lerman Trust, the Feminist Theory Workshop at Duke University, the Regional Arts Commission of Greater Saint Louis (on two occasions), and the Rockefeller Archive Center, Dr. Darling also was named the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Fellowship, a cash grant designated to further her contributions to the arts.

An editor, critic, and publisher, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press and Tupelo Quarterly, an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Review of Books, a contributing writer at Publishers Weekly, a staff blogger at The Kenyon Review, a contributing web editor at The Best American Poetry, and a freelance book critic at The New York Times Book Review.  Dr. Darling has also held staff positions at Gulf Coast and Black Ocean, where she worked as a book publicist and grants specialist.  As an emerging curator, Dr. Darling received funding for her editorial projects from the McNulty Endowed Chair, the David Gray Endowed Chair, and the English Department at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo.  More recently, she was honored with an award for magazine editing, which was jointly administered by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses and the Amazon Literary Partnership.  In 2022, she was named a finalist for a Whiting Award in Magazine Editing.  In the fall of 2022, she served as Visiting Faculty in Literary Publishing at the American University of Rome.

Dr. Darling has also lectured on contemporary literature, poetics, the publishing arts, and creative writing at San Diego State University, where she served as Editor-in-Residence; The New School; the Ionion Center for the Arts in Culture in Greece, where she led a master class in Collaboration, Social Justice, and Professional Empowerment; Poetry @ Tech, a workshop series hosted by the writing program at Georgia Tech; Calvin College’s Hudson-Townsend Publishing Institute, where she served as the keynote speaker; New York University, as well as NYU’s Summer Paris Writing Program; the Sorbonne Library in Paris; the Yale University Writers Workshop; the Columbia University Undergraduate Writing Program, as well as Columbia University’s Summer Program for Young Writers; the Antioch University — Los Angeles M.F.A. Program for Writers; the Fulbright Program; the United States Embassy in Togo; the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Fairfield University; Susquehanna University; the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; Stony Brook University; the Idyllwild Arts Academy; Vermont College of the Fine Arts; the Leopardi Writers Workshop in Recanati, Italy; the Maslow Family Foundation Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University; the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Wichita State University; the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo; the University of Missouri at Columbia; the University of North Texas; Drake University; Texas Tech University; Buffalo State University; Florida International University; the University of Arizona; Western Washington University; the Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Program; the Roxbury Poetry Festival; the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; the Hudson Valley Writers Center; and the Castle of Otranto in Italy.

In 2019, she was granted a five-year tenure as an expert consultant with the U.S. Fulbright Commission. During that tenure, she was selected to serve as the Fulbright Specialist in curriculum design and professional development for faculty at the University of Bangka Belitung in Indonesia and the Fulbright Specialist in American Studies, curriculum design and faculty development at the University of Lomé in Togo.  

This coming year, Dr. Darling is scheduled to lecture at Yale University, Stanford University, where she will lead a workshop in professional empowerment through their Continuing Studies division, the Pan-European M.F.A. Program at Cedar Crest College, the University of Glasgow, The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and The Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop, among many other venues. She is the founder of Penelope Coaching & Consulting, an international firm that specializes in book publicity, professional development coaching, and speaking engagements.

Dr. Darling is represented by Mark Falkin of Falkin Literary and Marilyn Allen of the Allen O’Shea Literary Agency for book-length nonfiction.  For speaking engagements, she is represented by Jean Jay of the Ovation Agency.

Born and raised in the American Midwest, she now divides her time between the Greece, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast. 

Please contact me directly to request a copy of my C.V. or press kit.