Lisa Russ Spaar is the author and editor of over ten books, most recently Orexia:  Poems (2017), More Truly & More Strange:  100 Contemporary American Self-Portrait Poems (2020),  and Madrigalia:  New & Selected Poems (2021).  A novel, Paradise Close, will appear in 2022.     Her honors include a Rona Jaffe Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Library of Virginia Prize for Poetry, the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, an All University Teaching Award, an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the 2013-2014 Faculty Award of the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, and a Horace W. Goldsmith National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Professorship appointment for 2016 - 2018.  She was a 2014 Finalist for the National Book Circle Critics Award for Excellence in Reviewing and one of three national finalists for the 2016 Cherry Award for Excellence in Teaching.  Her “Second Acts” column on second books of poetry is a regular feature at the Los Angeles Review of Books, and her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.   She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.