Teachers & Writers Collaborative

Cynthia Cruz

• RUIN (Alice James Books, 2006)
• Poetry published or forthcoming in Grand Street, Agni Review, American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, and others. Anthologized in Isn’t it Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets and The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries

• Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, Finalist: 2001
• Paris Review/Zoo Press Poetry Book Award, Finalist: 2001, 2002, 2003
• Alice James New England/New York Book Award, Finalist: 2000 and 2002
• Puffin Grant, 2002

• Yaddo
• MacDowell Colony
• Virginia Center for Creative Arts

Cynthia was born on an Air Force base in Germany and raised in Northern California. She received her BA from Mills College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was co-creator of a weekly reading and discussion series on writing and race and class. She is currently adjunct lecturer in English at Queens College. She has taught writing and literature at Fordham University and Westchester Community College. Cynthia leads a poetry-writing workshop for women in the eating disorder unit of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Her work with children includes tutoring homeless children in reading and writing at the Coachman Homeless Shelter in White Plains; teaching literature and writing to at-risk teenagers at Tri-County High School in Easthampton, Massachusetts; and teaching elementary school students at St. Philips Academy in Newark, New Jersey. In the summer of 2002, Cynthia worked with children in the West Bank town of Tulkarm. Cynthia has also led poetry workshops for high school students in the Sarah Lawrence College CCE program. She is currently at work on her second book of poems, How to Catch a Ghost in a Jar, as well as a memoir, The Kingdom. She has been bringing poetry to children, grades K through 9, in the New York City public schools with Teachers & Writers Collaborative since 2001.