Krysia Jopek

Krysia Jopek earned her Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree in English from the University of Connecticut, her Master’s of Philosophy in Poetics and Twentieth-Century American Poetry from the City University of New York Graduate Center, and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Literary Fiction from Albertus Magnus. She studied in London her sophomore year at the University of Connecticut and attended Semester at Sea through the University of Pittsburgh during the fall semester of her senior year before teaching writing and world literature at City College of New York for a decade.

Her father’s family survived deportation from Poland to Siberia by Stalin in 1940 and remained Displaced Persons until 1952, which is the subject of her novel, Maps and Shadows (Aquila Polonica, 2010), recipient of a Silver Benjamin Franklin award in Historical Fiction. She is also the maternal granddaughter of Polish immigrants. The combination of her family background, travels, education, and teaching brings a global dimension to her writing and worldview.

Jopek's full-length book of poetry, DIRGE: a ballet for 13 dancers (2024) has been described by Pierian Springs Press as “timeless, dreamy, elusive, mystical, mythical, philosophical, and highly experimental–prose poetry.” Her chapbook, Hourglass Studies (Crisis Chronicles, 2017), a single poem in 12 sections, was nominated for a Pushcart Award in Poetry. She has written reviews of contemporary poetry for The American Book Review, The Pacific Rim of Books, and Canadian Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared in BlazeVox, Redactions, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and Columbia Poetry Review, among other poetry journals. In 2017 she founded diaphanous micro, an e-journal of literary and visual art.

She currently resides in Connecticut.