Steve Bellin-Oka

Steve Bellin-Oka earned his M.F.A. from the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers. He is the author of four chapbooks, including Dead Letter Office at North Atlantic Station (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017) and Out of the Frame (Walls Divide Press, 2019). His first book of poems, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost, was chosen by Peter Balakian as the winner of the 2019 Vassar Miller Prize and was published in February 2020 by the University of North Texas Press. His next two chapbooks both won prizes–Tell Me Exactly What You Saw and What You Think It Means won the 2021 Blue Mountain Review LGBQT+ Chapbook Contest and was published by SCE Press and Proviso, a text/image collaboration with the painter Kristen Tomecek, won the Antenna Chapbook Prize from Paper Machine Press and was published in 2022. The recipient of a 2019-2023 Tulsa Artists Fellowship from the George Kaiser Family Foundation for public engagement with the arts, he has previously taught creative writing, literature, and film studies at Ripon College, the University of Mississippi, St. Norbert College, and Eastern New Mexico University. His other honors include fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He is the poetry editor of The Bookends Review and a contributing editor for Nimrod International Journal. He is also the series editor of the Robin Becker Chapbook Series for Seven Kitchens Press. In spring 2023, Steve will be the Kranzburg Visiting Poet at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is also currently the founding director of Tulsa Glitterary, an LGBQT+ writers’ organization sponsoring a yearly conference and a monthly LGBQT+ reading series, as well as the founding editor of Fork Tine Press. Read more about Steve at the Academy of American Poets.