Peter Balakian

Peter Balakian is the author of eight books of poems—including No Sign (University of Chicago Press, 2022); Ozone Journal (Chicago, 2015), which won the Pulitzer Prize; and Ziggurat (Chicago, 2010), a collection that deals with the aftermath of 9/11—and four books of prose, including Vise and Shadow: Selected Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art and Culture (Chicago, 2015) and the memoir Black Dog of Fate (Basic Books, 1997), which won the PEN/Albrand Prize. Among his other books are June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974–2000, and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, which won the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize. He teaches creative writing at Colgate University. (updated 10/2023)

The Pulitzer-winning collection Ozone Journal contains two poems first published in AGNI, “Near the Border” and “Slum Drummers.” The long title poem is a sequel to “A-Train / Ziggurat / Elegy,” which was first excerpted in AGNI before appearing in his earlier collection Ziggurat.

Read Ani Kazarian’s review of Balakian’s collection Vise and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture.