Patty Seyburn

Patty Seyburn was raised in Detroit. She earned a BS and an MS in journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine, and a PhD in poetry and literature from the University of Houston.

Seyburn has published five poetry collections: Threshold Delivery (Finishing Line Press, 2019); Perfecta (What Books Press, 2014); Hilarity (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2009), which won the Green Rose Prize awarded by New Issues Press; Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002); and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998), which won the 1997 Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award in 2000.

Additionally, Seyburn’s work has been anthologized in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), edited by Deborah Ager and M. E. Silverman; Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque Books, 2015), edited by Suzanne Lummis; 99 Poems for the 99 Percent (99: The Press, 2013), edited by Dean Rader; Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006), edited by Michael Dumanis and Cate Marvin; and Poetry in Michigan/Michigan in Poetry (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2013), edited by William Olsen and Jack Ridl.  

Seyburn has taught at California Institute of the Arts and the University of Southern California. She has been a professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, since 2006. She lives in Southern California.