Gerald
Costanzo
Professor of English
Area of Study
Creative Writing
Bio
Carnegie Mellon University Press, which I founded in 1975, publishes twenty books each year in the fields of poetry, short fiction, memoir, history, art history, education, and business. Perhaps the Press' most notable book has been Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah which in 1987 received The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Commencing in the year 2000, three of the past five Pulitzer winners in poetry either began their careers with or were sustained by Carnegie Mellon University Press. I teach courses in the writing and history of poetry. I have published seven collections of poems and edited four anthologies. For twenty years I was editor of Three Rivers Poetry Journal. My first collection, Badlands, was also the first book published by the noted publisher of poetry, Copper Canyon Press. Two new books, Regular Haunts: New and Selected Poems, and Spiderman for Life: The Collected Poems of James W. Hall (edited with an introduction by Gerald Costanzo) are forthcoming. My work has been honored with two Fellowships in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as by fellowships from the Falk Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. It has also received two Pushcart Prizes.