Peter Covino

Peter Covino is a poet, translator and editor. He was born in Sturno, a town in the province of Avellino, Italy, in 1963. He earned an MS in social work at Columbia University, an MA in English at City College, and a PhD in English from the University of Utah.

Covino’s recent book of translation, What Sex Is Death? (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025) by Dario Bellezza, won the Wisconsin Press Prize for Poetry in Translation, selected by Geoffrey Brock. Covino is also the author of the full-length poetry collections The Right Place to Jump (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2012) and Cut Off the Ears of Winter (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2005), winner of the 2007 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. 

A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, Covino’s other awards include a fellowship from Richmond American University London. He was also a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome.

Prior to entering academia, Covino had a fourteen-year career as a social worker in the fields of AIDS services and foster care. One of the founding editors and trustees of the nonprofit publisher Barrow Street Press, he is currently an associate professor of English in the PhD program at the University of Rhode Island. He lives in Providence.