Born in Okinawa, Japan, Brenda Shaughnessy grew up in Southern California. She received her BA in literature and also women’s studies at the University of California.
she also earned an MFA at Columbia University.
Shaughnessy has received numerous honors and awards for her work, including fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, where she was a Bunting Fellow.
She is the author of Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), So Much Synth (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), which was nominated for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Norma Farber First Book Award.
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she also earned an MFA at Columbia University.
Shaughnessy has received numerous honors and awards for her work, including fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, where she was a Bunting Fellow.
She is the author of Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), So Much Synth (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), which was nominated for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Norma Farber First Book Award.
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