Emily Warn

Emily Warn is an American poet. She was born in San Francisco, grew up in Michigan, and was educated at Kalamazoo College, the University of Washington, and Stanford University. She moved to the Pacific Northwest 1978 to work for North Cascades National Park, and a year later moved to Seattle where she has lived, more or less ever since.

Her essays and poems have appeared in Poetry, Parabola, The Seattle Times, The Kenyon Review, Blackbird, BookForum, The Bloomsbury Review, and The Writer's Almanac. She has taught creative writing or served as writer-in-residence at many schools and arts centers, including Lynchburg College in Virginia, The Bush School in Seattle, Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, and Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico.

Her most recent book of poetry, Shadow Architect (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), is an exploration of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet — the alef-beit — in which she considers the limits and generative power of language. Within the set boundaries of this alphabet, Warn unites her own distinctly American poetics with the language of sacred texts and commentaries.

She currently divides her time between Seattle and Twisp, Washington.

Selected works

Poetry

• Shadow Architect (Copper Canyon Press, 2008)
• The Novice Insomniac (Copper Canyon Press, 1996)
• The Leaf Path (Copper Canyon Press, 1982)