Kaia Sand

Read poems by this poet

Kaia Sand was born in 1972 in Fairbanks, Alaska, and grew up in Salem, Oregon. She received a BA from the University of Portland in 1994 and an MFA from George Mason University in 2001.

Sand is the author of A Tale of Magicians Who Puffed Up Money that Lost Its Puff (Tinfish Press, 2016); Remember to Wave (Tinfish Press, 2010); and interval (Edge Books, 2004), a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year. She is known for her investigative and interdisciplinary poetry. Carolyn Forché writes, “Kaia Sand’s work always interests me: her inventories, interventions, recordings, dispatches, her mixing memos into songs, her soundings and measurements and exposés.” Sand is also the coauthor, with Jules Boykoff, of Landscapes of Dissent: Guerilla Poetry & Public Space (Palm Press, 2008).

Sand has previously taught at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Willamette University, and Pacific University. She leads a series of writing courses called Vignettes & Verse and currently serves as both the artist in residence at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center and the resident poet at Portland State University. She lives in Portland, Oregon.